Hlophe 'fishing on dry ground'

2008-07-24 08:37

Philip de Bruin

Johannesburg - Cape Judge President John Hlophe has handed an application to the Rand High Court asking that the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) be forbidden from continuing with an investigation against him.

The court documents were issued by the court registrar on Wednesday and delivered to the JSC. All the JSC commissioners have already received copies.

Marinus Wiechers, a constitutional expert and former Unisa law professor, said that Hlophe "is fishing on dry ground".

"The application he is submitting is completely premature. Second, the JSC acts strictly according to the requirements of the constitution.

Put JSC in a bad light

"Third, it seems to me as if the only real goal of this kind of application is to try to put the JSC in a bad light."

The contents of the documents were veiled in secrecy on Tuesday night and Beeld was told that the file in the registrar's office was empty on Tuesday.

Beeld heard from a reliable source close to the JSC that the hearing of Hlophe's application had been placed on the High Court's roll for August 7.

The reason why Hlophe asked that the JSC be forbidden from continuing to hear oral testimony against him, is because he felt the charge against him, submitted by the entire Constitutional Court Bench "did not reveal any charge" and that there was therefore no reason why Hlophe had to be tried by the JSC.

This development in the Hlophe saga comes after Hlophe and Constitutional Court judges have been handing in allegations against each other to the JSC since May.

Appeal Court Judge Craig Howie, the acting chairperson of the JSC, confirmed on Wednesday that interdict documents had been submitted to the JSC. He did not wish to give any further comment.

- Beeld