Cape judges disown alleged Hlophe victim
• Ten justices refuse to share a bench with junior judge
The ugly clash between judge president John Hlophe and his deputy, Patricia Goliath, has now engulfed nearly a third of the High Court judges in Cape Town, who are refusing to share a bench with the junior judge at the centre of assault claims against Hlophe.
Ten of the court’s 34 permanent judges, who handle some of SA’s most politically sensitive cases, have written to Hlophe about their dire concerns relating to “the apparent and serious lack of integrity” of judge Mushtak Parker, who is believed to be the judge referred to by Goliath in her explosive judicial complaint about Hlophe.
The judges, who have signed their names at the bottom of the five-page letter, are Dennis Davis, Siraj Desai, Lee Bozalek, Fatima Meer, Ashley BinnsWard, Owen Rogers, Esther Steyn, Mark Sher, Robert Henney and Pat Gamble.
Their concern about serving as judges alongside Parker centres on allegations and evidence that he has given multiple contradictory accounts about an alleged “assault” he suffered at Hlophe’s hands, as well as his alleged refusal to hand over a sworn statement he made about this “assault” incident shortly after it happened.
In her complaint against Hlophe, Goliath said this unnamed judge had been on the verge of laying a criminal complaint against Hlophe. But, after the intervention of two other colleagues, he had decided not to.
Hlophe admitted he did have a dispute with the unnamed judge, but denied assaulting him. According to the judge president, the disagreement was about a private issue not related to judicial work and it was resolved through mediation.
Judge Andre le Grange then entered the fray, and wrote to Hlophe last week to inform him that Parker had “told me in person that you viciously pushed him against a cupboard in his chambers”.
He also claimed that Parker had told him that fellow judges had persuaded him not to lay charges against Hlophe — an account that appears to support Goliath’s Judicial Service Commission (JSC) complaint.
In a letter sent to Le Grange on March 13, Parker said he
“categorically disagreed with your version of what had transpired between you and I”.
“Quite simply, having reflected on the narrative with regard to the alleged assault, very soon thereafter, and without anyone having influenced me in any way whatsoever, I realised that events may not have unfolded in a way I had initially perceived,” Parker said.
He said his “misperception” of what had transpired “was quite understandable, given the emotional state at the time”.
As a result, Parker said, “I therefore came to the firm but inescapable conclusion that a complaint of any nature in this regard [against judge president John Hlophe] will be both inappropriate and unnecessary.”
It is now apparent that at least 10 of Parker’s colleagues do not accept this response, particularly given that he told at least three of them he had been assaulted by Hlophe in the months that followed the altercation. They further record that he met Goliath about the alleged assault in October 2019.
“We do not know from personal knowledge what happened between you [Hlophe] and Parker in his chambers,” they state in their letter to the judge president.
“What we do know is that Parker has given materially inconsistent accounts of the incident. We know also that his recent allegation that ‘very soon’ after the alleged assault that he came to realise that events may not have unfolded in the way he had perceived them is diametrically at odds with what he told other colleagues many months after the incident.”
As a result of this “apparent and serious lack of integrity”, the judges say they are “not willing to sit” with him on the bench “for the time being”. Doing so, in light of his publicly known contradictory statements, “would lead to any court where he was acting being tainted”.
The judges have copied their letter of complaint about Parker’s apparent dishonesty to chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng.
The JSC, which is handling the Hlophe/Goliath matter, did not respond to requests for comment.