The Judge President of the Gauteng Division of the High Court, Dunstan Mlambo, has rejected suggestions that he has a soft spot for President Cyril Ramaphosa and is biased against former president Jacob Zuma.
Mlambo has responded to questions relating to his judgments, relating to the Public Protector’s right to instruct other organs of state in line with the separation of powers principle.
Specifically, there are those including civil society organization Democracy in Action that has accused Mlambo of inconsistency when he found that former Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela was well within her rights to recommend the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry to probe allegations of State Capture, and yet later found that Busisiwe Mkhwebane had exceeded her powers in instructing the National Prosecutions Authority (NPA) to investigate possible acts of money laundering in the raising of funds for Ramaphosa’s 2017 ANC presidential campaign.
Mlambo has this objection.
“We approach cases on the facts as they come to us and our application of the law leads us to the outcomes that we reach in those matters. So, it is completely unfortunate that I was unfair against the former president and I am in favour of the current state president. I deny it. It’s not like that. It’s not how I operate. I value my independence and impartiality and open-mindedness.”
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Mlambo says South Africa should support the initiative of establishing regional tribunals on the African continent. Mlambo says such bodies are critical to providing justice to citizens who cannot get it in their own countries.
He was answering a question from one of the JSC commissioners about his stance on regional tribunals.
Mlambo says aggrieved Zimbabwe farmers whose property was confiscated managed to successfully challenge this in the SADeC Tribunal. But he says African Union leaders have disabled the court from doing further work.
“Regional tribunals are international tribunals, like the African Court on Human and People’s Rights. They exist to provide justice to those citizens of the member-states who haven’t got justice in their own domestic backgrounds. So yes, I mean, I would encourage that we continue supporting that initiative of the SADeC tribunal and the African Court on Human and People’s Rights. I think advocate Ntsebeza is one of the most recent appointees of that court. So, we, as a country, should support these international tribunals, especially in the continent.”
Live proceedings in the stream below:
