Hoho seesaws back for 3rd CCMA try
SACKED Eastern Cape legislature researcher Kerr Hoho has won an award from the Labour Appeal Court to have his dismissal case heard again by the CCMA.
Hoho was dismissed for misconduct in relation to the publishing of his poison-pen newsletter “Father Punch”, and convicted in a civil court on 22 counts of defamation contained in the newsletter.
He was sentenced to three years imprisonment, suspended for five years.
The Daily Dispatch reported that Hoho was dismissed in 2012 and had been fighting to get his job back ever since.
He appealed at the CCMA but his dismissal was upheld. He then took the matter to the Labour Court, which sent the matter back to the CCMA for an appropriate sanction for the misconduct he was found to have committed.
Judge Andre van Niekerk ruled that the case be heard by the original commissioner, Mzama Mama.
However, Mama was no longer working for the CCMA. Instead, commissioner Jean van Zydam heard the matter and again upheld the dismissal.
Hoho then took the matter to the Labour Appeal Court, where the CCMA award by Van Zydam was dismissed.
Hoho claimed to expose alleged acts of irregularities at the legislature through his newsletter.
Labour Appeal Court Judge Roland Sutherland said when the CCMA award was reviewed on the grounds that the commissioner (Mama) applied the wrong test, the matter had to be “remitted” (submitted again) to the CCMA before the same commissioner to apply the correct tests.
Sutherland found: “When the CCMA dealt with the remitted matter it was not resigned [assigned] to the initial commissioner who had resigned from the employ of the CCMA.”
He said the legislature and Hoho had consented to the substitution of another commissioner. However, Sutherland found: “The mere consent of the parties would have been insufficient to legitimise another presiding officer being assigned.”
In his newsletter Hoho anonymously accused various members of the legislature, provincial and national politicians and civil servants of embezzlement, corruption, and bribery.
He also accused senior civil servants of using their state positions to solicit sexual favours from junior employees.
Sutherland said Mama was physically available but merely not contracted to serve. He ruled: “The primary objective of the relief must be to fulfil the purpose of the order granted by Van Niekerk.
“That objective will be achieved by reinstating the initial order, and directing the parties, if it is impossible to comply, to approach Van Niekerk J with an application to vary the order.”
In the order delivered on May 10, Sutherland reinstated the order by Van Niekerk and made no order on costs as “the blunders seem to have been perpetrated in concert”.
Hoho could not be reached for comment as his phone was on voicemail.
Legislature spokeswoman Maria Hermans had not responded at the time of writing.