Judiciary must be seen to be impartial with its own

Last October, no fewer than 12 years after he got drunk, drove his Jaguar into the wall of a Johannesburg house and aimed racist slurs at its owner, judge Nkola Motata was found by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) to be a fit and proper person to administer justice. By this time Motata had reached retirement age, so he did not return to the bench. But he will receive a salary for life after the JSC decided he was guilty only of “misconduct”, not the “gross misconduct” recommended by its own tribunal. That would have cost him his benefits.

The case is worth remembering in light of a complaint the JSC received this week from the Western Cape deputy judge president, Patricia Goliath, about that division’s judge president, John Hlophe, and his wife, judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe. Her affidavit alleging gross misconduct is not the most elegant or coherent document in the history of South African jurisprudence, but Goliath’s claims raise questions about the administration of justice that clearly require serious and urgent examination.

She is not the first to express concern about Hlophe. In May 2008, every Constitutional Court justice complained to the JSC that the man who took over as judge president in 2000 had approached two of their number in an attempt to influence pending judgments relating to corruption charges against former president Jacob Zuma. Nearly 12 years later, the judicial conduct tribunal set up to investigate that complaint is yet to start work.

Quite rightly, the judiciary has been lauded as one of the bulwarks that has saved SA in the past decade. It has stood firm when the very notion of accountability has been under threat, offering South Africans a lifeline as the country appeared to be sinking under the weight of corruption.

It is vital that the judiciary’s integrity survives while the battle for the nation’s future continues, which is why the JSC cannot risk being seen to drag its feet or go easy when dealing with its own. It has already dismissed four complaints against Hlophe, amid considerable controversy, and allowed another to go untested for an unconscionable period. Now it must display rigour and, above all, urgency.