Legal blow for fired Sanlam exec
CAPE TOWN - A top Sanlam executive who was fired in a row over race and culture at the financial services giant has failed in an attempt to challenge a court ruling that prevented his reinstatement.
André Rheeder was fired in 2019 as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Sanlam Properties after he was accused of resisting transformation and being insubordinate, insolent or racist towards his new Line Manager, Mervyn Shanmugam.
The Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA) found Rheeder’s dismissal was unfair and ordered his reinstatement, but last September the Cape Town labour court ordered a new CCMA hearing chaired by a different commissioner.
Rheeder asked the labour appeal court for permission to challenge Judge Hilary Rabkin-Naicker’s ruling, meaning his reinstatement would stand, but on February 15, his application was refused by three judges.
“This court is of the view that the intended appeal has no reasonable prospects of success and that there is no compelling reason why it should be heard,” they said.
“This court, therefore, in general terms, concurs in the reasoning of the judgment of the labour court.”
Rabkin-Naicker had found that CCMA part-time commissioner Madeleine Loyson’s errors and irregularities were of ‘such a magnitude’ they had made a fair trial impossible.
Ruling
According to Rabkin-Naicker, Loyson’s ruling contained numerous opinions ‘of the mind-reading variety with no evidential basis to support (them)’, and said the commissioner repeatedly ‘made pronouncements on the way the business in question should be run and senior employees should deal with each other’.
Rheeder was charged with “failing to foster practices that created an inclusive culture by the continued use of Afrikaans .