The African National Congress needs to find a ”far more dignified” way of dealing with the succession issue, business magnate and former party heavyweight Tokyo Sexwale said on Monday. ”What we are seeing with the [Jacob] Zuma/Thabo Mbeki debacle is less than dignified,” he told an Institute for Justice and Reconciliation symposium in Cape Town.

A Pretoria High Court judge has at the last minute withdrawn his bid for a seat on the Constitutional Court, saying he thinks a woman should rather get the job. However, Judge Essop Patel’s decision also follows a series of letters to the Judicial Services Commission from an unsuccessful litigant who claims Patel is unfit for the job.

Beleaguered Cape Judge President John Hlophe was on Sunday given an opportunity to put his side of the racism row to his peers in the judiciary. And though he left the meeting of the country’s heads of courts immediately afterwards, thumping the door shut behind him, Chief Justice Pius Langa denied that he had stormed out.

Even though the men charged with killing baby Jordan Leigh Norton have been assaulted by fellow prisoners for a third time, a prosecutor argued on Thursday that they would be safer behind bars. Prosecutor John Ryneveld made the assertion in his closing submissions in a bail application by Sipho Mfazwe, Mongezi Bobotyane and Zanethemba Gwada.