President Cyril Ramaphosa has placed Justices TA Maumela and NP Mngqibisa-Thusi on suspension to allow the Judicial Conduct Tribunal to investigate suspected misconduct regarding alleged excessive delays by the judges in handing down a significant number of judgments.
The President has taken this step in terms of Section 177(3) of the Constitution, which empowers the President to suspend a judge on the advice of the Judicial Service Commission.
On 26 January 2023, the Judicial Service Commission accepted a recommendation of the Judicial Conduct Committee that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that the judges were guilty of misconduct in delaying the handing down of a significant number of judgments.
The Commission decided the matter should be referred to the Judicial Conduct Tribunal for investigation.
At its meeting of 20 April 2023, the Judicial Service Commission took a decision to advise the President to suspend Justice Maumela and Justice Mngqibisa-Thusi pending a tribunal process envisaged in Section 19(1) of the Judicial Service Commission Act, 1994 (Act No.9 of 1994).
Both Judge Maumela and Judge Mngqibisa-Thusi are suspended subject to the condition that they finalise their part-heard matters.
The President has informed Chief Justice Raymond Zondo and the suspended justices of his decision.
Lord Pistachio
So I\’m real good friends with this guy named Juan Ted. Now, Juan is a pretty incredible guy. He can steal ANYTHING he wants to. Literally anything. It could be the shirt off your back, the wallet in your pocket, or I\’m even sure he\’d find a way to steal your house (And your spouse too). So anyway, one day Juan and I are sitting around watching TV, and they announced that the hope diamond will not be on display anymore and is now getting moved to an undisclosed location. So as we hear this, Juan says \”I\’m gonna steal it\”. Now I know how good Juan is at this kind of stuff, so I just tell him good luck and he goes on his way. Eventually he narrows his search down to a small cave in South Africa. When Juan gets there, he doesn\’t see any guards or anything outside the cave, so he just walks in assuming he was wrong about where the diamond was. He wanders around for a while until he sees a long lit hallway with the hope diamond at the end of it. Confident in his abilities, he strolls over to the diamond and picks it up before realizing its a trap! Suddenly, red lights flashed, armed men came running out, sirens went off. You could hear one of the men say under his breath \”We finally caught Juan Ted.\” But Juan, being the best thief in the world, said \”Not quite. On the count of three, I will disappear.\” As the men looked around confused, Juan began to count. \”Uno. Dos.\” And he disappeared without a tres.
Pepper
Fun South African Fact: Some countries have deserts; some have subtropical forests, right? South Africa has: deserts, wetlands, grasslands, bush, subtropical forests, mountains and escarpments.