REQUEST FOR SCA PRESIDENT'S CONSENT TO SUE JSC INFORMATION OFFICER MAYA CJ TO COMPEL HER COMPLIANCE WITH A PAIA REQUEST

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EXCEPTIONALLY IMPORTANT; FOR PRIORITY ATTENTION:
REQUEST TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SUPREME COURT OF APPEAL FOR CONSENT UNDER S. 47 OF THE SUPERIOR COURTS ACT TO SUE THE CHIEF JUSTICE UNDER S. 78 OF THE PROMOTION OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION ACT

36 Pearson Street
Eshowe 3815, KZN
9 February 2026

Justice Betty Molemela, President of the Supreme Court of Appeal
By email to Simone Basson, Chief Registrar: sibasson@sca.judiciary.org.za
and Minkateko Maluleke, Office Manager, Office of the President of the Supreme Court of Appeal: mimaluleke@sca.judiciary.org.za

Cc:
Chief Justice Mandisa Maya, Chairperson and Information Officer of the Judicial Service Commission
By email to JSC Secretary Mbali Songca: msongca@judiciary.org.za
Kalayvani Pillay, Acting Director-General of the Office of the Chief Justice
By email: kalapillay@justice.gov.za ; ramanzini@justice.gov.za
Information Regulator Adv Pansy Tlakula
By email: info@inforegulator.org.za ; mmakgopa-madisa@inforegulator.org.za ; paiacomplaints@inforegulator.org.za
Adv Alison Tilley, Coordinator of Judges Matter; and,
Member of the Information Regulator
By email: alison@judgesmatter.co.za ; info@judgesmatter.co.za
Verushka Memdutt, Interim National Coordinator of Right2Know Campaign: By email: nc@r2k.org.za ; admin@r2k.org.za
Adv Paul Hoffman SC, Director of Accountability Now
By email: info@accountabilitynow.org.za
Gilbert Sendugwa, Executive Director of Africa Freedom of Information Centre, Kampala
By email: info@africafoicentre.org
Maíra Martini, Chief Executive Officer of Transparency International, Berlin
By email: ti@transparency.org

Dear Justice Molemela

REQUEST FOR YOUR CONSENT UNDER SECTION 47(1) OF THE SUPERIOR COURTS ACT TO SUE CHIEF JUSTICE MANDISA MAYA – CHAIRPERSON AND INFORMATION OFFICER OF THE JUDICIAL SERVICE COMMISSION – UNDER SECTION 78 OF THE PROMOTION OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION ACT FOR DECLARATORY, MANDATORY, AND COSTS ORDERS UNDER SECTION 82

1. On 22 September 2025, I delivered a request to the Judicial Service Commission (‘JSC’) under section 18 of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (‘PAIA’ or ‘the Act’) for access to a variety of specified records.
2. My request, its acknowledgement by JSC Secretary Mbali Songca, and all further documents in the matter are accessible online at link.
3. For quick and easy reference, I annex the Form 2 request Annexure, listing the records I requested.
4. In view of past problems I’d encountered repeatedly over the past decade in trying to access JSC records under PAIA, I prefaced the Annexure with an exposition of the law applicable to the proper handling of my request (‘Note’).
5. As indicated in the Note, Chief Justice Mandisa Maya is the JSC’s information officer ex officio, having regard to the definition of that office in section 1 of PAIA.
6. The Note quotes Ms Songca stating on oath that the JSC doesn’t have any deputy information officers.
7. I very much doubt that my request was passed to information officer Maya CJ for her response to it; and I expect she’ll be appalled to learn how it was mishandled – resulting in the violation of my constitutionally entrenched, fundamental civil right to public body information, and her exposure to court orders being granted against her under section 82 of the Act, including a declarator of constitutional delinquency (mandated by section 172(1)(a) of the Constitution) and a mandamus directing her compliance with my request.
8. On 11 October 2025, Ms Songca asked me to resubmit my request to two lawyers employed by the Office of the Chief Justice (‘OCJ’), whom she claimed were deputy information officers.
9. It’s clear from this that Ms Songca either didn’t read my Note on the law governing the handling of my request or didn’t comprehend it, even though it was written in simple, easy-to-understand English.
10. One of the alleged deputy information officers she mentioned, Adv Nelson Phakola – who, from my past experience over the years, is the JSC’s go-to guy in PAIA matters – appears not to hold a written delegation by the OCJ’s information officer (its Director-General), and therefore isn’t actually a deputy information officer of the OCJ (let alone of the JSC), contrary to Ms Songca’s incorrect claim about this. The same is likely true of the other person mentioned by Ms Songca, namely Adv Wilna Lambley.
11. I established this by addressing a PAIA request to the OCJ in September 2025, in which I sought copies of Mr Phakola’s written delegation as OCJ deputy information officer and the OCJ’s PAIA manual published under section 14 of the Act. See my request at link.
12. When my request for these two documents was illegally ignored, I asked the Information Regulator (‘IR’) to conduct a general PAIA compliance investigation of the OCJ under section 77H of the Act. Instead of doing this, the IR obtained the OCJ’s PAIA manual and passed it on to me – but not the delegation I’d requested, which appears never to have been issued by the OCJ’s information officer; in other words, doesn’t exist. See Part 4 at link.
13. The OCJ’s PAIA manual indeed identifies Advocates Phakola and Lambley as OCJ deputy information officers, but absent written delegations as such, signed and issued to them by the OCJ’s information officer (its Director-General) under section 17(6) of PAIA, the mere fact that their names appear in this official information brochure doesn’t invest them with this special authority to respond to PAIA requests for OCJ records.
14. Equally irrelevant is their registration by the IR as OCJ deputy information officers, if indeed the IR has issued them with such certificates. I mention this because I’ve discovered that the IR has been handing out deputy information officer registration certificates to Legal Practice Council employees who don’t hold written delegations under section 17, and who therefore aren’t deputy information officers, contrary to their false billing as such in the IR’s false registration certificates.
15. Anyway, as pointed out in my Note, the OCJ and the JSC are quite different public bodies, established at different times, in different ways, for different purposes; and even if the said two advocates did hold written delegations as OCJ deputy information officers, that wouldn’t have authorised them to respond to my PAIA request for JSC records addressed to the information officer of the JSC, a distinct organ of state.
16. Having legally effectively delivered my PAIA request for JSC records to JSC information officer Maya CJ, I declined to resubmit it to those two OCJ lawyers – especially because under PAIA only JSC information officer Maya CJ, or a deputy information officer she’s designated in writing under section 17 of the Act, was legally competent to respond to my request.
17. But also because Adv Phakola had illegally and unconstitutionally refused a previous duly made PAIA request I’d made for a certain JSC record – aside from lacking authority under PAIA to respond to it – and his pitiful justification given for doing so, not permitted under any of sections 34 to 45 of the Act, revealed that he’s clueless as to how PAIA works and about the importance of our constitutionally entrenched right to information, to which the Act gives practical effect. See link.
18. And further because in responding to that previous PAIA request delivered to JSC information officer Maya CJ via JSC Secretary Songca, neither the latter nor Adv Phakola had come along with Ms Songca’s new story that I should resubmit my request to him and/or Adv Lambley.
19. It’s quite within JSC information officer Maya CJ’s power under section 17(1) of the Act to designate OCJ employees Phakola and Lambley as deputy information officers of the JSC, since the JSC doesn’t have its own staff and is administered by OCJ employees seconded to it; and indeed, the peculiar language of that subsection contemplates this. Given Adv Phakola’s demonstrated professional ineptitude regarding PAIA, however, Adv Lambley looks a safer bet for such a critical delegation pertaining to the very serious business of respecting entrenched constitutional rights.
20. Section 25 of PAIA required a response to my request by no later than 30 days from the date I delivered it.
21. The time allowed expired without a response granting or refusing it and under section 27 of PAIA my request is deemed to have been refused.
22. No internal appeal lies in the case of a ‘public body’ of the category ‘b’ type defined by section 1 of PAIA, so my first recourse for redress prescribed by section 78(1)(b) of PAIA, before suing under section 78 (‘Applications regarding decisions of information officers …’), was a complaint to the IR under section 77A about the tacit illegal and unconstitutional refusal of my request; and I duly filed it. See link.
23. This time, however, the IR refused to assist me – on the grounds that my manifestly serious complaint (not my PAIA request itself) was ‘frivolous or vexatious or not made in good faith’ (pick any one you like), so ‘any further action is unnecessary or inappropriate’.
24. The IR’s shambolic notice making these stupefying claims is linked in Part 3 at link, along with my comments identifying the many contradictions and outright lies told in it.
25. Any honest reader of the notice will agree that Mr Moraka Serepa who ‘prepared’ it, Ms Zanele Mofokeng who ‘reviewed and recommended’ it, and Adv Makhwedi Makgopa Madisa who approved and signed it, would be more suitably employed washing taxis and selling mielies over at the rank.
26. In view of the IR’s scandalous dereliction of its statutory responsibility to facilitate information transparency in our constitutional democracy, and thereby obviate avoidable litigation and help prevent the further congestion of our court rolls, I’m now constrained to sue JSC information officer Maya CJ for access to the records I requested – embarrassing her very regrettably, and wasting my time, my energy, and my money.
27. Section 47 of the Superior Courts Act regulating the ‘Issuing of summons or subpoena in civil proceedings against judge’ requires judicial consent to do so.
28. And where the Chief Justice is the intended respondent in any litigation, subsection 47(1) requires your consent as President of the Supreme Court of Appeal to institute it. So I need your consent to bring an application against Maya CJ for orders declaring that as JSC information officer she’s violated my fundamental right to public body information guaranteed by section 32(1)(a) by not responding to my PAIA request; directing her to turn over the records to which I duly sought access, or certify those don’t exist under section 23 of PAIA, and repay me what I spent bringing the case.
29. Subsection 47(1) provides:
Except for an application made in terms of the Domestic Violence Act, 1998 (Act 116 of 1998), no civil proceedings by way of summons or notice of motion may be instituted against any judge of a Superior Court, and no subpoena in respect of civil proceedings may be served on any judge of a Superior Court, except with the consent of the head of that court or, in the case of a head of court or the Chief Justice, with the consent of the Chief Justice or the President of the Supreme Court of Appeal, as the case may be.

30. As said, the JSC has persistently failed to comply with my several PAIA requests over the years – see the dismal history at link – and I’ve previously had to sue after one of my duly made requests for access to JSC records was ignored as usual. See the court papers at link.
31. In that matter I neglected to seek consent to sue under section 47 of the Superior Courts Act; but fortunately for me, the point wasn’t taken in the answering papers and my claim to the records I’d requested was substantially conceded.
32. In those answering papers, however, the JSC’s lawyers persisted in suppressing certain seriously incriminating and compromising records I’d sued for, on the ground advanced that they were ‘privileged and therefore cannot be disclosed’ – even as PAIA doesn’t contemplate and permit such a ground for denying access to requested records; and the records in question were in no wise privileged under any rule of civil procedure. And then, contradicting this suggestion that the requested records were too important and confidential to release to me, the JSC’s lawyers also claimed my request for them was ‘vexatious ... and cannot be acceded to’ – notwithstanding the implicit concession in the bogus ‘privileged’ justification that my request was manifestly serious. But a subsequent request for related records was granted by the JSC (albeit not by then information officer Raymond Zondo CJ himself as the Act required); and the JSC’s positive response to that request confirmed the ongoing corruption of its disciplinary processes by Mlambo JP (as he then was), which I was investigating, tipped by information I’d received about this. See my comprehensive discussion of it all at link
33. I was alerted to my omission in failing to have obtained the necessary consent in that first PAIA application upon seeing a news report about the failure of Cabinet Minister Gwede Mantashe’s review application against Zondo CJ (now ret.), whom he’d sued in his capacity as chairman of the State Capture Commission for an order setting aside findings against him made in the Commission’s final report. The Minister hadn’t sought and obtained consent under section 47(1) of the Superior Courts Act before launching his application, with the result that it was dismissed as a ‘legal nullity’ on that ground alone, without any consideration of its merits.
34. This time round, in my second intended application against the JSC’s information officer to compel compliance with my instant PAIA request, I won’t repeat my mistake and risk my irrefragable claim to access the illegally and unconstitutionally withheld records that I’ve duly requested being defeated in limine on that procedural ground.
35. As the High Court at Pietermaritzburg held in Khanyile v Director-General Province of KwaZulu-Natal and Others (16707/22P) [2023] ZAKZPHC 121:
Section 11(1) of PAIA confers an unqualified right of access to records of public bodies, subject only to the grounds of refusal set out in Chapter 4 of Part 2 of PAIA.
36. And to the extent that anyone might imagine very incorrectly that:
(i) I’m not constitutionally entitled to sight of the latest batch of records I’ve requested, because high-level judicial corruption and other judicial malfeasance in the New South Africa are none of my business;
(ii) I should just ignore the repeated calls of former Chief Justices Mogoeng and Zondo to report such corruption, and should look away from it;
(iii) I shouldn’t be sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong;
(iv) Contra Khanyile, I don’t actually enjoy an ‘unqualified right’ to access public body records unless they’re hit by one of the discretionary or mandatory grounds for refusal set out in sections 34 to 45 of the Act, and I’m not entitled by section 32(1)(a) of the Constitution to use PAIA to embark on a ‘fishing expedition’ and go hunting for possibly extant incriminating records, as KwaZulu-Natal Division High Court Judge President Portia Poyo Dlwati reckoned, unbelievably ignorantly, in tossing a straightforward PAIA case I’d brought – later conceding her abysmal, elementary error in granting me leave to appeal (see link)
– the Constitutional Court had already confirmed exactly contrariwise in Helen Suzman Foundation v Judicial Service Commission (CCT289/16) [2018] ZACC 8; 2018 (4) SA 1 (CC); 2018 (7) BCLR 763 (CC) (24 April 2018) at [44]:
PAIA affords any person the right of access to any information held by the state. The person seeking the information need not give any explanation whatsoever as to why she or he requires the information. The person could be the classic busybody who wants access to information held by the state for the sake of it.
37. A ‘busybody’ like me, keenly interested in judicial corruption – having been seriously injured by two fantastically corrupt, criminally dishonest senior judges (see just below), and consequently determined to see them held to account, one way or another.
38. Apropos of records 14-17 listed in the Annexure concerning my appeal against the seemingly alcoholic dismissal of my squarely documented judicial corruption complaint against Basheer Waglay JP (now retired), the JSC’s Judicial Conduct Committee (‘JCC’) Appeal Committee unanimously upheld it on 19 December 2025, and directed that it be dealt with properly, unlike before. See the decision and all case documents at link.
39. And before that, the JCC Appeal Committee (different judges) also upheld my appeal against the dismissal of my documented criminal complaints against Dunstan Mlambo JP (as he then was; now DCJ) in its commendably comprehensive, 42-page majority decision delivered on 19 February 2024. See material excerpts at link. The full decision and all case documents are at link.
40. The notes under item 12 on the last-mentioned webpage mention how then JSC chairman Zondo CJ very properly stood up for me at the conference held by the JSC (sans members of Parliament) to decide what to do with the Appeal Committee’s excellent decision and how he strained to prevent the unlawful disposal of the case by insisting that the JSC’s obviously illegal disregard for the audi alteram partem rule would expose its decision to reversal on judicial review. Unfortunately, the nakedly partisan majority – virulently denigrating me on the record again and again – gunned him down in its vote of 9 to 3 against him.
41. You’ll recall that as a member of the JCC at the time you were originally assigned to decide my criminal and other complaints against Mlambo JP. I don’t know why you were substituted by Zondi JA, but I’m sure that had you remained on the case you’d have found, as Constitutional Court Justice Elizabeth Nkabinde (ret.) and Supreme Court of Appeal Justice Ephraim Makgoka later did, that my criminal complaints against Mlambo JP had been well made on the ample documentary and other evidence I’d adduced in support of them; that his responses to them were unsupported and contradicted by the evidence, and were unsatisfactory and unconvincing; and that he had a case to answer before a Tribunal accordingly.
42. In other words, I’m certain you’d have honestly and honourably discharged your judicial oath, just as the said two Appeal Committee judges did, and that you wouldn’t have covered for the criminal accused in the manner your replacement did so despicably – like the third judge on the Appeal Committee also did in his disgraceful minority decision, picked to pieces by the majority in their scathing comments on it. And like the JCC judge did in the Waglay JA case, just as sickeningly.
43. Anyway, I’m eagerly looking forward to the imminent arrival of the next US Ambassador to South Africa, Brent Bozell – sworn in late last year after his confirmation by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – and I’ll be providing him with a detailed brief about the documented criminal corruption of our judiciary; about the repeated attempts by other crooked judges on the JCC to cover it up; and about the JSC’s demonstrated indifference to this corruption, all mentioned above. He’ll doubtlessly be concerned to learn that the ‘rampant corruption’ in our country, which he mentioned at his confirmation hearing, festers also in the top echelons of our judiciary and within the JSC (Maya CJ excluded; it was before her time). As will the dozens of other foreign ambassadors enumerated in my correspondence with the JSC, to whom I’ll be copying my brief on this exceedingly serious and disgusting subject.
44. I look forward to your consent under section 47(1) of the Superior Courts Act to sue JSC information officer Maya CJ under section 78 of PAIA for orders under section 82 – essentially compelling her to hand over the JSC records that I duly requested, or certify those that don’t exist, and other relief.
45. As said above, I’m sure she’s quite innocent in the matter and has just been badly let down by her useless support staff. Who, despite their appointments as Senior Law Advisors, evidently have no idea whether they’re coming or going when it comes to constitutional information law. Even when I patiently explain everything to them so nicely.
Yours sincerely

ADV ANTHONY BRINK
Admitted 12 April 1983
corrupt-judges.co.za
anthonybrink.sa@gmail.com

ANNEXURE