Demand LPC Sep 25

1. Responding in February 2025 to my request under the Promotion of Access to Information Act (‘PAIA’) the previous month for access to certain Legal Practice Council (‘LPC’) records, following your advice to me in November 2024 that the complaint laid by Legal Aid South Africa (‘LASA’) against me in November 2015 had ‘been considered by an Investigating Committee and … the Committee is satisfied that there is prima facie evidence that you are guilty of misconduct’, you informed me that the LPC would ‘consider’ the ‘additional information’ mentioned in my PAIA request.[1]

2. This ‘further information’ consisted of three Judicial Service Commission records (‘the JSC records’), namely:

· The decision by Constitutional Court Justice Elizabeth Nkabinde (ret.) and Supreme Court of Appeal Justice Ephraim Makgoka, on the Appeal Committee of the Judicial Service Commission (‘JSC’) Judicial Conduct Committee (‘JCC’), delivered on 19 February 2024 in the matter of my eight criminal and other capital complaints against Mlambo JP (as he then was, now DCJ, and cited as such hereafter) – in which decision upholding my appeal against the earlier dismissal of my complaints these Justices recorded (a) their findings that my four most serious criminal and other capital complaints against Mlambo DCJ had been well-made on the documentary and other evidence I’d presented in support of them, and that Mlambo DCJ’s defences to those extremely serious charges set out in his responses to them were contradicted and unsupported by the documentary record, and were unsatisfactory and unconvincing; and (b) their recommendation that the JSC request the President to appoint a Judicial Conduct Tribunal to try Mlambo DCJ on my criminal and other capital charges. Material excerpts of their decision[2] are annexed marked ‘A’.

· The Judicial Service Commission’s subsequent decision to reject Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka’s findings and recommendation on the basis that ‘there is no prima facie evidence to substantiate the allegations’.

· The transcript of the JSC’s virtual conference at which this decision was taken, recording then-JSC chairman Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s insistent warnings that the JSC’s proceedings violated the principles of natural justice, and that this gross irregularity exposed the JSC to an application for judicial review, with every likelihood that the High Court would rule the JSC’s proceedings and decision unlawful, and set them aside.[3]

3. Your email referred also to my letter I sent to Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka in December 2024, which I’d copied to you, also to Chief Justice Maya, also to the the Paris-based NGO Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, in which I reported that in the popular traditional cultural practice of gunning down whistleblowers, investigators, detectives, auditors, lawyers, prosecutors, witnesses, and complainants in high-level corruption cases in the New South Africa nowadays, I’d been targeted for professional assassination for duly complaining about Mlambo DCJ’s repeated criminal and other impeachable misconduct as LASA Board chairman, first in my several litigations against LASA and then in my eight complaints against him to the JSC – the most serious of which Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka had found facially well made and answerable, as said. A copy of my letter to them is annexed marked ‘B’.

4. Contrary to your incorrect claim made in your February 2025 email that I’d asked the LPC to reconsider its decision to prosecute me in light of this ‘additional information’, I hadn’t done so; but naturally I supported the LPC’s eminently sensible proposal in this regard.

5. And contrary to your suggestion to this effect, I’d actually been under no obligation to share the decisions of the JCC Appeal Committee and JSC with the LPC. The LPC was legally required to exercise an independent judgment, not just slavishly follow one or other contradictory opinion of a different public body.

6. But anyway, on 15 April 2025[4] I emailed this ‘additional information’ to you, and you promptly acknowledged receipt of it the following day.

7. On 25 June 2025, you confirmed by email that this ‘further information’ that I’d provided you ‘is being referred to an investigating committee for re‑consideration.’ And that ‘We await the investigating committee’s decision following the submission of further information.’

8. In the LPC’s eventual response on 15 September [5] to my January PAIA request, your Mrs Anita Willoughby stated: ‘The Senior Legal Officer has advised that the matter was referred to an Investigating Committee following the submission of additional information and that the Investigating Committee is currently seized with the matter.’

9. It’s not clear from this statement whether the same or a different Investigating Committee is dealing with the complaint, and exactly when the three JSC records were referred to it, but whatever the case the LPC has been sitting on the ‘additional information’ I gave it for five-and-a-half months now, and as far as I know the Committee still hasn’t decided whether or not I’m a disgrace to my profession and should be expelled from it for persistently protesting, with receipts, that Mlambo DCJ gravely misconducted himself while Board chairman of LASA,[6] having regard to Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka’s very detailed and careful findings – for me, and against him – concerning the same core factual disputes.

10. Although you assured me in your June 2025 email that ‘there is currently no Disciplinary inquiry proceeding against you at this stage’,[7] the fact remains that I’m still under investigation by an Investigating Committee ‘seized with the matter’.

11. By mid-October, a fortnight from now, six months will have passed since the LPC got the ‘further information’ it wanted – and it still hasn’t delivered its decision of the reconsidered complaint as far as I’m aware.

13. I propose allowing the LPC another six weeks to return its final decision as to whether I’m to be tried by a Disciplinary Committee or cleared of wrongdoing as falsely alleged against me by that utterly corrupt public entity LASA.[8]

14. That is, I expect the LPC’s decision by the end of November 2025, failing which I intend applying to court for an order compelling it to finally resolve the complaint.

15. I expect that at the end of this ten-year horror the LPC will clear my good name and wipe my hitherto spotless professional reputation clean of the incalculably damaging stain with with LASA fouled it.

16. I expect the Investigating Committee to heed the findings made by Constitutional Court Justice Elizabeth Nkabinde and Supreme Court of Appeal Justice Ephraim Makgoka when upholding my appeal before them, and to note well their recommendation that Mlambo DCJ be tried before a Tribunal on my most serious criminal and other capital complaints.

17. I expect that on any intelligent, diligent, conscientious, unbiased, honest and honourable reassessment by the Investigating Committee of the documented facts of this case, such as Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka performed in rendering their 42‑page decision, LASA’s complaint will be thrown out with the rubbish.

18. Section 33(1) of the Bill of Rights in Chapter 2 of Constitution provides: ‘Everyone has the right to administrative action that is lawful, reasonable and procedurally fair.’

19. The LPC’s unreasonable delay in resolving the complaint plainly violates this fundamental civil right.

20. The professional, financial, and personal consequences of the mishandling of the complaint, and failure to resolve and dismiss it, first by the Society of Advocates of KwaZulu-Natal and then by the LPC, have been very extreme for me indeed. My beautiful life-partner died as a direct result of the acute stress caused by LASA’s ‘double-tap’ strike to kill me off – by copying its complaint also to the Magistrates Commission, thereby getting me summarily fired as a contract magistrate and blacklisted from any future appointments, even as the Chief Magistrate in Pietermaritzburg told me my services in my home region here in Zululand were very much in need. The pending complaint had the effect of derailing a special investigation of LASA begun by the Auditor General,[9] and it cost me a permanent appointment as a civil magistrate following an interview at the Justice Department’s HQ in Pretoria that I’m certain I cracked. So I’m exceedingly bitter both about the false complaint and the dilatory and otherwise prejudicial mishandling of it by the authorities responsible for deciding it.

21. My remedy in the case of a public body like the LPC violating my fundamental right to reasonable adminstrative action is provided by the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act. Section 6(2)(g) entitles me to ‘institute proceedings in a court … for judicial review’ in respect of the LPC’s ‘failure to take a decision’ … ‘where–’ (per section (3)(a)) ‘(i) an administrator has a duty to take a decision; (ii) there is no law that prescribes a period within which the administrator is required to take that decision; and (iii) the administrator has failed to take that decision … on the ground that there has been unreasonable delay in taking the decision’.

22. Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka will undoubtedly be interested in whether the LPC finally comes around to recognising the validity of my criminal and other impeachable complaints against Mlambo DCJ – just as they did in finding them facially well-made and answerable – and in whether the LPC finally dismisses LASA’s malicious complaint against me; or whether it decides to stay its former course in perversely persecuting the complainant in the biggest documented judicial corruption scandal in our country’s history.

23. In which event subpoenas for witnesses to be cross-examined will fly, including one for Mlambo DCJ (with Maya CJ’s leave under section 25 of the Supreme Court Act), and another for the Investigating Committee’s member(s) who falsely reported last year, and again this year (if so), that my documented criminal and other capital misconduct complaints against Mlambo DCJ, first raised in my various litigations against LASA, and then repeated to the JSC, were baseless and professionally disgraceful – contrary to the JCC Appeal Committee’s implicitly opposite findings as to whether I’m a professional reprobate or not.

24. So I’ll obviously be letting Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka know what the LPC decides to do; and as before, I’ll copy Maya CJ and the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa when doing so – as well as the multitude of foreign embassies and other cc addressees named on the ‘Retaliation’ webpage[10] I’ve set up, all likely to be interested in top-level judicial corruption in our country; in the JSC’s corrupt move to cover this up in summarily rejecting the JCC Appeal Committee’s manifestly true findings against Mlambo DCJ, on the ludicrously false and plainly untruthful basis that I’d made out no prima facie case against him to answer; and in the LPC’s active involvment in this corruption by trying to professionally kill off and thereby discredit the complainant, in keeping with the current fashion in the New South Africa of rubbing out such unusually honest and courageous persons risking everything and paying an incalculable price for instisting on the accountablity of the judiciary as section 177 of the Constitution contemplates.

25. In the situation, please see to it that the complaint is finally disposed of by the end of November 2025 – two months hence.

[1] The PAIA request, related correspondence, and the outcome are accessible at corrupt-judges.co.za/LPC.

[2] Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka’s full decision is accessible at corrupt‑judges.co.za/Mlambo_JP.

[3] This JSC decision is accessible at the just-mentioned website.

[4] As I explained to you by email on 25 February 2025, I was very busy under time pressure to complete and submit a document for submission to the JCC Appeal Committee in another documented judicial corruption case – see corrupt-judges.co.za/Waglay_JP – so lost a couple of weeks.

[5] See illegal-aid.co.za/LPC/PAIA_Jan_25/Response_LPC_PAIA

[6] And so much more has been reported to me by former high-level LASA insiders, to be dealt with separately

[7] Mixed use of upper and lower case as in the original text, and in other text quoted herein.

[8] See generally illegal-aid.co.za. My twelve precisely documented criminal charges against then-CEO Vidhu Vedalankar are accessible at the ‘Auditor General’ link. I’m told by a former national officer at LASA that the Auditor General is currently all over it.

[9] See illegal-aid.co.za/AG.

[10] See corrupt-judges.co.za/LPC.