Disbarred ‘advocate’ Teffo to face the music today
IT IS not yet known whether disbarred “advocate” Malesela Teffo will today pitch up at an urgent application to hold him in contempt of court for posing as an advocate.
But if he does, he will have to defend the application as an ordinary member of the public and not dressed in his robes.
Teffo has been seen on several occasions – especially recently in the Senzo Meyiwa murder trial – in his full advocate’s regalia. In the Meyiwa trial he took up a position among the other legal representatives and demanded to speak to Judge Tshifhiwa Maumela.
Both in the Meyiwa case, and in some others, Teffo maintained that he is still an advocate. This is despite the fact that he was disbarred in September last year. The Legal Practice Council, the watchdog over the profession, however, has had enough. It will today ask the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, for an urgent order to imprison Teffo if he continued with his antics.
Puleng Keetse, chairperson of the Legal Practice Council, made it very clear in papers filed in the urgent contempt of court application that Teffo is no longer an advocate.
He is thus not allowed to appear on behalf of “clients” nor may he pose as an advocate.
Keetse stated that Teffo is somehow under the false impression that the order striking him off the roll of advocates is suspended. Teffo seems to believe this to be so, as he is challenging that order.
But two applications brought by Teffo against last year’s order – one to overturn the order and another for a variation order – were never heard by the court. He launched the applications and never pitched at court to take it further.
In his application to overturn the order, Teffo, among others, said in his written application that two of the judges who presided over the matter simply ruled against him “to impress their masters”. He referred in this regard to the deputy judge presidents of the Pretoria and Johannesburg high courts.
He also accused the two judges who axed him for having “a total lack of respect for his standing in society and in the legal profession”.
Keetse said while the Legal Practice Council received numerous reports that Teffo was posing as an advocate, the organisation actually obtained proof of this.
The Legal Practice Council had sent some of its lawyers to the Meyiwa trial as a watching brief, where they observed Teffo’s antics first-hand. Other first-hand evidence included when Teffo, in another court, took the landlord to court as the latter had thrown him out of his “chambers”.
In that application, Teffo told the court he is an advocate and as such, he needed his chambers back.
Keetse said it was urgent that Teffo be stopped in his tracks, as he is not only disrespecting the legal profession, but also confusing the public as to his true status.
In asking the court to either impose a suspended sentence or a direct prison sentence on Teffo, Keetse said: “The sentence must reflect the seriousness of Mr Teffo’s conduct, which is far more egregious and unrelenting than that of Mr (Jacob) Zuma, whose incarceration was immediate and not suspended.”