The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) has let it be known that Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe will be present at the interviews on Friday, 23 April of candidates for two vacant positions in his own fraught division.
Hlophe’s intention to appear at the interviews and the JSC’s communication on 19 April that the Judge President will be doing so, occur in a sort of legal vacuum, a place in which Hlophe thrives.
It took more than 13 years for a complaint about Hlophe’s inappropriate approach to two Constitutional Court judges in 2008 to be heard by a Judicial Conduct Tribunal, chaired by retired Judge Joop Labuschagne, which unanimously found Hlophe guilty of gross misconduct.