Top advocate faces disciplinary hearing

Two of the seven misconduct charges Advocate Dali Mpofu SC faces in a Legal Practice Council (LPC) disciplinary inquiry are linked to his alleged attempts to impugn Professor Thuli Madonsela's integrity. However, Madonsela, the former Public Protector (PP), has washed her hands of that process. ‘I understand the LPC has a duty to ensure discipline among legal professionals but believe that can be achieved without involving me,’ she told News24. ‘I have moved on and, as a believer in ubuntu and its restorative justice ethos, I have been restored as the court of public option found me to have handled Mpofu's rogue conduct in the Mkhwebane impeachment inquiry, into which they unduly dragged me, with grace, professionalism and firmness.’ While acknowledging she had not engaged with the organisations which had complained to the LPC about Mpofu's often abrasive questioning of her at the Section 194 inquiry into SA's removed PP Busisiwe Mkhwebane's fitness to hold office, Madonsela expressed concerns that her consent had not been sought in connection with those charges. ‘I think they should have engaged me to say, “we want to complain about you” because it's not a class action, it's a person's action, so I think they should have consulted me. I also take responsibility for not going to them,’ she said.

News24 notes that four charges the LPC is pursuing against Mpofu relate to his alleged professional misconduct at the Mkhwebane inquiry. In addition to admitting to threatening the inquiry chairperson, Qubudile Dyantyi, and asking former SA Revenue Service official Johann van Loggerenberg about his chronic mental health condition in an alleged effort to discredit him, Mpofu has been charged for falsely accusing Madonsela of criminality over the way her statement to the Mkhwebane inquiry had been commissioned. This conduct was, the LPC alleges, ‘aimed at trying to discredit her (Madonsela) and imputing criminal conduct on her part’. This violated Mpofu's obligation as a legal practitioner to ‘not impugn the character of a witness unless he or she has good grounds to do so’, it said.

Madonsela is also the subject of the third LPC charge against Mpofu, who it accuses of ‘spending many hours cross examining’ and ‘attempting to impugn her character, where you reasonably should have known that her answers would not be material to her credibility or material to any issue in the case’. News24 notes that she has previously revealed that, prior to that heated interaction, she and Mpofu ‘had such a good relationship’. He had offered to mentor her if she joined the Bar as an advocate, a position that would then have enabled her to apply for a position as a judge, she said. She also stressed she had no animosity towards Mpofu ‘because he took no skin off my bones’ during his attempts to humiliate her at the Mkhwebane inquiry. The LPC inquiry into Mpofu's conduct starts on 30 April.

Full News24 report