Race row judge threatens to sue Hlophe

In the latest development, Judge Wilfred Thring, the judge at the centre of the row over alleged racist remarks by Cape Judge President John Hlophe, has taken what a report in The Mercury describes as the extraordinary step of placing all documentation relating to the issue in the national state archives. ‘I have no intention of going down in history as the judge who was publicly accused by his Judge President of overt racism,’ he said. Thring adds he has not ruled out taking legal action against Hlophe for allegedly ‘defamatory’ statements. Thring has been at the centre of the race row in the Cape High Court since it was alleged that Hlophe had deliberately assigned the Mikro Afrikaans language case to him because Hlophe knew he would ‘f..k it’ up. For the first time, Hlophe’s version of the Mikro debacle has emerged. In a letter to Thring, included in papers lodged with the archives, Hlophe wrote: ‘I deny that I said the case was allocated to you in anticipation that (you) would decide it wrongly … what I did say, if Mr (Norman) Arendse (counsel for the Western Cape Department of Education) had reservations about you, this was the opportunity to test the independence of the judiciary.’ Full report in The Mercury

Meanwhile, the Freedom Front Plus is trying to have Hlophe impeached. Giving notice of a substantive motion in the National Assembly yesterday, it called for action to be taken against Hlophe for him to be removed as a judge. Rule 66 of the National Assembly makes clear that no MP shall reflect upon the competence or honour of a judge of a superior court, whose removal of office is dependent on the decision of the house, ‘except upon a substantive motion alleging facts which if true would in the opinion of the Speaker prima facie warrant a decision’. A report in The Mercury points out that the ball is now effectively in National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete’s court as to whether the FF’s notice will remain merely symbolic or whether it has substance and warrants further investigation.
The Mercury report not available online

And in another development, it has emerged that the Freedom Front Plus is to urge the Human Right\'s Commission to widen its investigation of a complaint to be lodged by the Black Lawyers Association to include the BLA itself. It wants to know ‘how it could at all be possible that 11 years after the inauguration of the new government’, an organisation such as the BLA could exist. That finding alone, notes a Cape Argus report, might disclose interesting perceptions regarding racism in the judiciary. Full Cape Argus report