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'Too many racist appointments'
11/04/2007 13:32 - (SA)
Cape Town - A candidate for a post on the bench of the Cape High Court faced tough questioning at the Judicial Service Commission on Tuesday over her claim that judicial appointments were often steeped in racial and gender prejudice.
Advocate Nona Goso, a black woman who has served as an acting judge in several divisions, was also quizzed over incidents in which, as an acting judge, she appeared to have signed off review cases without reading them, and granted a divorce order without hearing any evidence.
Goso's claim of prejudice was made in a written reply to a Cape Bar Council submission to the JSC, which is sitting in Cape Town this week. Though neither document was made available to the media, it appears that the council criticised some of her judgments, and also her diligence and punctuality.
In response, Goso said judicial appointments were "often steeped in deep rooted racial and gender prejudices".
Challenged by JSC member and veteran advocate George Bizos, on whether she was saying the decisions of the commission itself were biased, Goso said it was not particularly directed at the JSC, but was made in the context of judicial appointments in general.
Claims of inefficiency
Asked by Bizos how many heads of court divisions were black and how many white, she said she did not know. Bizos said of the 11, only two were white, and asked her if that was evidence of deep rooted prejudice.
Bizos said many black advocates had been given work, which they performed efficiently and professionally, and rose to posts in the provincial divisions of the high court and higher courts.
He suggested that the reason her practice had not flourished was because of a perception that she could not be entrusted with important work.
"If that is the case, it applies to all of us, many of us black advocates," replied Goso.
Eastern Cape judge president Cecil Somyalo told Goso there were a few matters "of concern to me and the division generally" dating from her spell as an acting judge in the province.
One was when in January 2002 he "by accident" discovered more than 50 criminal review files heaped on her desk, and instructed her to deal with them.
A day later she told him she had disposed of the cases.
In fact, Somyalo said, she had merely "endorsed the record", and sent them back to the magistrate's courts they came from without reading the files.
As a result, two special cases from Queenstown, where an assistant magistrate erred by imposing an impermissible sentence, had to be returned to the High Court.
Goso however first insisted to the JSC that she had not simply endorsed any of the reviews, then said she did not have an "independent recollection of the two cases," and that "it may have been an oversight".
Somyalo also said that he was reliably informed that when she was an acting judge in the Northern Cape, she granted a divorce order without hearing any evidence.
The case had to be redone, and a fresh order made by the judge-president.
Goso said she would have to think about exactly what happened.
"I cannot comment at the moment," she said.
Goso was one of five candidates interviewed on Tuesday for three posts on the Cape bench.
- SAPA
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