hlophe weighs action against court 
13 June 2008

Hlophe’s attorney, Lister Nuku, said last night the judge was “weighing up his options”. He said Hlophe was concerned by the Constitutional Court issuing a statement against him, instead of leaving it to the JSC to determine.  “The fact that the judges ran to the media instead of the proper forum, which is the JSC,” was what concerned Hlophe.

Two weeks ago, the Constitutional Court took the unprecedented step of saying in a media statement that it had laid a complaint against Hlophe with the JSC for an “improper attempt to influence this court’s pending judgment(s)” in cases involving African National Congress president Jacob Zuma.

Nuku said last night that the usual practice was that complaints made to the JSC were confidential, so the statement was “improper”.   It was later reported that the two judges who had allegedly been approached by Hlophe were Bess Nkabinde and acting judge Christopher Jafta.  JSC spokesman Marumo Moerane said last night the original complaint letter from the Constitutional Court “was not specific”.

It was couched in general terms and did not identify who Hlophe was alleged to have approached and the “specific conduct” Hlophe was accused of, Moerane said.  The JSC met last week to discuss the matter but said it was unable to make any finding as to whether there was a prima facie case against Hlophe.   This was because the letter of complaint received by the JSC did not contain sufficient detail.

Last year, the JSC received 23 complaints about judges, and in 2006 it received 17. The norm has been for the JSC procedures to be kept confidential.
But previous complaints against Hlophe have been made public, although not by the JSC.  In April 2006, Cape advocate Peter Hazell made a complaint relating to payments Hlophe received from the company Oasis.  No punitive action was taken against Hlophe by the JSC, for which it has been criticised
Meanwhile, it was reported yesterday that Hlophe was seeking leave from Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla while the JSC engaged in deliberations on the Constitutional Court’s complaint.

Franny Rabkin,  http://www.businessday.co.za