Your race is run, JSC tells ConCourt judges

The eight-year saga involving the entwined lives of President Jacob Zuma and Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe and his apparent attempt at influencing two Constitutional Court judges has, according to the JSC, reached the end of the road. The ongoing and unprecedented challenge by Judges Bess Nkabinde and Chris Jafta of a decision by their own court was, added the JSC, ‘bad in law’ and ‘misconceived’, notes Marianne Thamm in a report on the Daily Maverick site. Last week the judges filed papers asking for a decision by their own court to be rescinded. In his founding affidavit, Jafta said that the court failed to provide both judges with an opportunity to make representations with regard to the ground on which it based its decision (the lack of a quorum). In his responding affidavit, Advocate Ishmael Semenya SC, on behalf of the JSC, said that the two judges ‘have enjoyed a fair public hearing already before the full Bench of the High Court and later before the SCA where, on each occasion, substantial and comprehensive arguments, both written and oral, were presented on their behalf’. He said that before then, the applicants had also had the opportunity to raise their dispute before the statutory tribunal, which similarly accepted both written and oral argument submitted on behalf of both judges and that their rights had not been undermined. ‘This court’s refusal of an application for leave to appeal is not appealable to any other court. Its decision is final and marks the end of the litigation road for the applicants,’ said Semenya.