JUDGES MATTER: SA’S NEXT CHIEF JUSTICE INTERNATIONAL NEWS
The Constitutional Court of South Africa in Johannesburg.
Will SA’s next Chief Justice be chosen from among the country’s current judge presidents? With the tenure of South Africa’s current Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng ending in 2021, it’s time to find his successor says Judges Matter, an entity formed to monitor the yearly JSC (Judicial Service Commission) interviews as well as the judiciary in the interests of public transparency.
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udges Matter shares its thoughts on potential candidates in an article published on its website on 9 November 20201. On the one hand, considering the significant increase in the Chief Justice’s administrative duties, it would make sense to select the country’s next Chief Justice from among the judge presidents who head up the various divisions of the High Court, thanks to their proven experience in running a high court, says Judges Matter. On the other hand, however, this would draw from judges not already on the Constitutional Court.
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The Judge President candidates include: Judge President Dunstan Mlambo who heads up the Gauteng High Court – “the largest and busiest high court in the country since 2012”. He’s a highly regarded administrator whose court has been praised for functioning with “relatively little disruption” and for running some trials via remote hearings during the Covid-19 lockdown2. However, media reports have also described a “collapse of infrastructure” at the Pretoria High Court, one of the two seats making up the Gauteng High Court3. Whilst this
SECURITY FOCUS AFRICA NOVEMBER – DECEMBER 2020
may raise questions for Judge President Mlambo, it should be noted that the report attributes the difficulties to inefficiencies in the Office of the Chief Justice, not to mismanagement of the court. Says Judges Matter: “He is not merely an administrator, however, but an impressive jurist in his own right, and served as a judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal between 2005 – 2010. He has written significant judgments such as President of the Republic of South Africa v Office of the Public Protector, holding former President Zuma personally
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