JSC give Hlophe deadline to answer questions

JSC spokesperson Marumo Moerane said the questions stemmed from a defamation suit the group brought against Hlophe\'s fellow Cape judge, Siraj Desai. ‘Some of them relate to questions that were (previously) asked of him, but he couldn\'t really answer because of the court case,’ Moerane is quoting as saying in a report on the IoL site. ‘Now that the court case is over we are awaiting the result of those responses.’ He said the JSC wanted the answers before the end of June, but didn’t say what the next step might be. A report in The Weekender points out that among the new documents members have been given as a result of the court action by Oasis is evidence that Hlophe was a trustee of Oasis only from November 2000. This raises a number of questions about the permission he claims to have been given to become involved with the company. According to Hlophe, he was authorised to take the job by former Justice Minister Dullah Omar. However, Omar had quit as Minister at least 18 months before Hlophe took on the position. Full report on the IoL site

No SA judge has ever been impeached, although Helen Suzman brought a motion of impeachment in Parliament against Judge JJ Strydom during the height of apartheid, notes legal commentator Carmel Rickard in a report in The Weekender. She justified her action on the grounds of a blatantly racist decision he had given in a murder trial. As she had no support from National Party members, however, her motion came to nothing. Hlophe is only the second judge against whom possible impeachment investigations have been conducted under the present Constitution, Rickard points out. The previous case, she says, concerned a judge of the Transvaal High Court, Ismail Hussein, against whom complaints were made by a man involved in a family inheritance dispute. Hussein had been acting as arbitrator in the matter and it was alleged that funds, given to him for safekeeping, had not been returned. The commission conducted detailed investigations and decided to call Hussein to a full session at which he would be questioned in person. However, before that hearing took place, Hussein resigned, thus pre-empting any further steps towards impeachment. Full report in The Weekender

Questions about a missing Oasis court file are raised in a column by Rickard in The Weekender. The missing file contains the documents relevant to the litigation between Oasis Group Holdings and Siraj Desai, the judge whom the company initially wanted to sue. Read the full column in The Weekender