Judge president’s wife hits back

● Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe fired a furious riposte yesterday at Western Cape deputy judge president Patricia Goliath.

In a five-page statement, which she said had been copied to the office of the chief justice, Salie-Hlophe said: “The complaint is simply a bitter spew to oust the judge president [her husband John Hlophe], the ambition to succeed him and to garner herself [Goliath] the entitlement she believes she is rather more suitable for.”

Goliath’s statements, she said, were “palpably untruthful, at best can be called eloquently stated gossip”.

Salie-Hlophe accused Goliath of having an “unhealthy obsession with my marriage” to someone she referred to as “an old black man”.

And she said she had nothing to do with appointing or terminating acting judges. “Not a single judge ... was ever proposed by me,” she said.