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.
Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
The government and the forestry industry have locked horns in a court case that may have far-reaching implications for South Africa’s water laws and “threaten the entire basis of water-use allocations” to the forestry industry and other major water users.
In simple terms, the dispute involves the large volumes of water sucked up by different plantation tree species and the timber industry’s recent drive to convert more of its plantations from pine trees to gum trees because of changing commercial demand.
Swapping one species of plantation tree for another may not seem like a big deal, but in a water-scarce country like South Africa, water regulators insist that every drop needs to be counted and allocated carefully.