36 Pearson Street
Eshowe
KwaZulu-Natal
31 January 2025
Your ref: JSC 533/17
The Honourable Chief Justice Mandisa Maya,
Chairperson of the Judicial Service Commission
By email to JSC Secretary Mbali Sonca:
msongca@judiciary.org.za
Dear Chief Justice Maya
BRINK v WAGLAY JP
GROSS JUDICIAL MISCONDUCT COMPLAINT
STILL UNDECIDED AFTER SEVEN-AND-A-HALF YEARS
1. In July 2017, I lodged with the Judicial Service Commission (‘JSC’) an
impeachable judicial misconduct complaint of unprecedented gravity against
Basheer Waglay, then-Judge President of the Labour- and Labour Appeal Courts. A
copy is annexed marked ‘A1’.
2. Although now retired and succeeded for the time being by Edwin Molahleli AJP,
I’ll continue referring to him as Waglay JP. And to distinguish my complaint
against him from other unrelated judicial misconduct complaints mentioned
herein, I’ll refer to it as the Complaint. All further annexures hereto will be
simply named ‘A2’, ‘A3’ etc.
3. Then-JSC Secretary Lynette Bios acknowledged receipt of my Complaint a few
weeks later in August. See ‘A2’.
4. Oddly, her letter of acknowledgment gave the same JSC reference number for my
Complaint against Waglay JP and for my several quite different complaints
against Mlambo JP filed around the same time.
5. My Complaint charged Waglay JP with having corruptly rejected a petition for
leave to appeal under improper influence, effected on him by way of an
anonymous, unsigned, undated ‘memorandum’ importuning him to dismiss my case by
denigrating me personally, lying about the issues before the trial court, and
lying about the issues on appeal.
6. All this was clearly contrived to defeat the ends of justice by prejudicing
Waglay JP against me as petitioner, by misdirecting and misleading him as to the
issues before him for decision, and by inducing him to reject my petition
without considering its merits. The unambiguous burden of the ‘memorandum’ was
that I was a distracted fool and that my petition was fit only for the rubbish
bin.
7. The person who forged the ‘memorandum’ and uttered it to Waglay JP perfectly
succeeded in his corrupt project, in that Waglay JP summarily dismissed my
petition, right in the middle of a pending condonation application brought by
the respondent in the case, namely Legal Aid SA (‘LASA’) – before all the
prescribed papers in its application had been filed; before that application had
been decided; before LASA’s out-of-time affidavit opposing my petition was
properly before court; and accordingly before my petition was ripe for decision.
8. The nut of my Complaint was that Waglay JP violated his judicial oath to
administer justice fairly and impartially.
9. More particularly, Waglay JP demonstrated his greater personal loyalty to the
criminal author of the ‘memorandum’ – almost certainly a long-time judicial
colleague of his (identified in my Complaint) with a direct interest in seeing
my petition fail – over any principled loyalty to the oath he took on being
appointed as a judge.
10. A retired accountant friend of mine found this ‘memorandum’ in the court
file while making an inventory of its contents at my request during my
investigation of the plainly irregular circumstances in which my petition had
been prematurely dismissed – without regard to its merits, such as, inter alia,
the trial judge’s fatal misallocation of the final burden of proof in the case,
thus completely vitiating his judgment, which most basic error pointed out in my
appeal notice both the judge and LASA frankly conceded. Needless to say, unlike
the other documents in the court file, the ‘memorandum’ is unstamped – meaning
this criminal instrument didn’t go over the Registrar’s counter, collecting a
stamp in the usual fashion on its way into the court file. Quite the opposite,
it reached Waglay JP under the counter, so to speak, and naturally so, being
designed to illegally pervert the decision of my petition.
11. On learning from my friend’s report over the telephone that evening of the
presence of this strange ‘memorandum’ in the court file and then hearing his
summary from memory of its shocking contents, I asked him to return to court the
following day to request the Registrar to photocopy it for me, and to certify
the inventory of the court file’s contents, including this document, that my
friend had now typed up from his original manuscript note.
12. The photocopy of the ‘memorandum’ made by the Registrar, the inventory made
by my friend that he certified, and my friend’s confirmatory affidavit about all
this are attached to my Complaint.
13. Incredibly at first blush, yet flatly exposed and incontestably proved by
his own court records, Waglay JP compounded his most egregious violation of his
judicial oath in my matter by proceeding to perpetrate a criminal fraud on me,
for which he stands to be jailed. This is described below.
14. My Complaint about Waglay JP’s judicial corruption in disposing of my
petition so dishonestly contrasts fundamentally with my eight complaints against
Mlambo JP, also filed in mid-2017, the most serious of which Constitutional
Court Justice Elizabeth Nkabinde and Supreme Court of Appeal Justice Ephraim
Makgoka found well-founded on 19 February 2024 on the documentary and other
evidence I’d presented – recommending accordingly that he be summoned to answer
them before a Judicial Conduct Tribunal.
15. The difference between my Complaint against Waglay JP and my complaints
against Mlambo JP is that the latter concerned his repeated criminal mendacity
and other capital misconduct committed as Chairperson of LASA’s Board of
Directors at the time, not in his capacity as a judge.
16. These eight complaints charged him with telling multiple criminal lies to
the Justice Portfolio of the National Assembly in a false ‘confidential’ report
he made to pervert a parliamentary inquiry it had instituted into high-level
recruitment corruption at LASA, and into its national management executives’
repeated and persistent suppression of documents I’d duly requested under the
Promotion of Access to Information Act (‘PAIA’), in which furtive illegal and
unconstitutional concealment he was complicit, as communication records annexed
to my complaints unequivocally proved; lying to the Justice Minister in a
separate, similarly false report to him, submitted to the same corrupt end, i.e.
to pervert the Minister’s own, separate, independently instituted inquiry into
these unlawful irregularities; criminally suborning defamatory perjury in a
false affidavit he instructed his attorney to make in order to corruptly
prejudice a court against me and thereby defeat my application for leave to
subpoena him for cross examination on (a) the said profusion of criminal and
other lies he told these highest executive and oversight authorities, and (b)
his repeated and persistent collusion in and connivance at the malicious,
corrupt, illegal and unconstitutional suppression of public body records duly
requested under PAIA, in furtherance of a recruitment corruption cover-up and in
violation of my fundamental right to information guaranteed by section 32(1)(a)
of the Constitution.
17. In other words, my complaints against Mlambo JP concerned his criminal and
other impeachable misconduct committed off the bench, in contradistinction to my
Complaint against Waglay JP, which concerned his impeachable judicial misconduct
committed not just as a judge but as head of the entire Labour Court system and
as its highest appellate authority therein, requiring the highest public trust.
18. On 11 June 2018, nearly a year after making my Complaint, I asked Secretary
Bios when I might expect Waglay JP’s response to it. Three days later on the
14th, she replied that she couldn’t find my Complaint and requested a copy by
email, which I provided the same day. See our email exchange recording this,
‘A3’.
19. Eight days later, on 22 June 2018, Secretary Bios sent me Waglay JP’s
response to my Complaint. See ‘A4’.
20. Her covering letter again bore the same JSC reference number that she’d
given my complaints against Mlambo JP.
21. On 9 July 2018, a couple of weeks later, I delivered my invited comments on
Waglay JP’s truly pathetic response, comprehensively taking it to pieces. See
‘A5’. My covering email to which my comments were attached is ‘A6’.
22. Six months after this, on 11 February 2019, Secretary Bios telephoned to ask
me for a signed copy of my Complaint, and I emailed it the same day. See ‘A7’.
23. On 29 November 2019, a further nine silent months down the track, I wrote to
then JSC Chairperson Mogoeng Mogoeng CJ protesting the JCC’s failure to have
decided my Complaint against Waglay JP, as well as my several complaints against
Mlambo JP, in regard to which all the papers were also in and the JCC’s decision
was equally overdue. See ‘A8’. The courier’s tracking service report, vouching
the delivery of my letter, is ‘A9’.
24. On 18 February 2020, two-and-a-half months after this, and apparently in
response to my letter to Mogoeng CJ, new JSC Secretary Sello Chiloane telephoned
me from his office well after-hours at 20h33, requesting that I urgently provide
yet another set of copies of my complaints against Waglay JP and Mlambo JP and
all further documents in these matters. Which I did a couple of hours later the
same night via Dropbox. My log of his call is ‘A10’. (I’d saved his number after
a call from him some years earlier in a different connection, so his name showed
up on my phone when he called again.) My email providing him with a hyperlink to
copies of all these requested documents in PDF, and his acknowledgment, is
‘A11’.
25. On 18 August 2020, six silent months after this, I wrote to Secretary
Chiloane, enquiring when I might expect the decision of my complaints. He didn’t
respond. My letter to him is ‘A12’. Proof of delivery by email is ‘A13’.
26. On 29 November 2020, after a further three months, I wrote to then-JCC
Chairperson Zondo DCJ, repeating my plea that my complaints be decided at last.
My letter to him, enclosing a copy of my November 2019 letter to then-Chief
Justice Mogoeng, is ‘A14’. The courier’s waybill is ‘A15’.
27. I copied that letter by ordinary mail to then-Chief Justice Mogoeng; to Jake
Jacobs: Chief Director, Office of the Secretary General, Office of the Chief
Justice; to Memme Sejosengwe: Secretary General, Office of the Chief Justice;
and to Nathi Ncube: Spokesman, Office of the Chief Justice. My letters to them
are bundled as ‘A16’.
28. On learning of the SAPO courier service’s failure to deliver my letter to
Zondo DCJ, I wrote to him again on 31 January 2021. See ‘A17’. For the reason
mentioned in my second letter I now used ordinary post, but copied it to
Secretary Chiloane by email a couple of days later to ensure he got it, at least
in PDF. My email to him is ‘A18’.
29. On 17 February 2021, then-Judiciary Spokesperson Nathi Mncube acknowledged
receipt of my November 2020 letter to Zondo DCJ, to which I’d attached a copy of
my letter to Mogoeng CJ, and provided some email addresses for use in any
further correspondence. See ‘A19’.
30. On 8 July 2021, JCC member Dumisani Zondi JA perfunctorily dismissed my
complaints against Mlambo JP – against which I successfully appealed, as said
above. All case documents in PDF and further developments in that matter can be
read at corrupt judges.co.za and illegal aid.co.za/JSC/Mlambo_JP.
31. On 30 September 2021, seven-and-a-half months after Spokesman Ncube’s
acknowledgment in February 2021 of my first letter to Zondo DCJ enclosing my
letter to Mogoeng CJ, and still no decision of my Complaint, I requested under
PAIA, ‘The JCC chairperson’s allocation of Brink’s gross misconduct complaint
against Waglay JP to one or more other JCC members for investigation in 2017.’
See item 7 on my list of requested records, a relevant excerpt of which is
‘A20’. (The entire 27-page request is accessible via the hyperlink provided in
paragraph 35 just below.)
32. The JSC ignored my request for this record and the others I’d specified – a
deemed refusal of access under section 27 of PAIA – and in April 2022 I had to
sue for it out of the High Court at Pietermaritzburg under case number 5042/22P.
33. In July 2022, substantially conceding my court application, the JSC finally
responded to my request by alleging in paragraph 21 of its answering affidavit:
‘The complaint by the applicant was allocated randomly to Justice Goliath. There
is no letter to that effect.’ A relevant excerpt of this affidavit is ‘A21’.
34. I treated this sworn statement as belated compliance with section 23 of
PAIA, which requires that non-existent records requested under section 18 of
that Act be certified as such on affidavit.
35. My application, my founding affidavit supporting it to which my full PAIA
request was annexed, and the JSC’s complete answering affidavit are all
accessible in PDF at illegal aid.co.za/JSC/PAIA/Application.
36. It’s not relevant to discuss here in any detail the legally clueless and bad
faith defences that the JSC raised against me to now actively obstruct my access
to other embarrassing and compromising records that I’d requested, save to point
out that ‘privileged’ is not a lawful ground for refusing access to a record
duly requested under PAIA, and a manifestly serious request cannot be
‘vexatious’ merely on account of its palpable and alarming potential to expose
the judge under suspicion and investigation to impeachment and removal from the
bench for gross misconduct.
37. In other words, the JSC is illegally and unconstitutionally obstructing my
access to the records that it’s now deliberately hiding from me, and it’s doing
maliciously and corruptly to protect a senior judge, suspected on reliable,
independently sourced and confirmed information of the most serious misconduct.
38. It follows that the JSC currently stands exposed to a declaration by the
High Court, as sought in my notice of motion, that it’s violated my
constitutionally entrenched and guaranteed fundamental civil right to
information held by the state and its organs in the democratic era, in first
failing to respond to my duly acknowledged PAIA request as it was legally and
constitutionally obliged to do, and then – profoundly aggravating this – in
raising obviously legally and factually spurious defences (a) to cover up the
specific judicial corruption I was probing, following a tip received from and
then confirmed by well-placed third parties, and (b) to hinder my formal
complaint about it to the JSC, as urged generally by President Cyril Ramaphosa
on 22 February 2021: ‘Anyone who has any evidence of any wrongdoing by any judge
should make use of the avenues provided in our Constitution and in our law to
ensure that appropriate action is taken.’
39. I quote the President urging this in my letter to then-Chief Justice Mogoeng
on 25 February 2021, reporting my meeting a couple of days earlier with former
President Jacob Zuma at his request for a briefing at his house on my complaints
against Mlambo JP, of which he’d got wind – at which meeting I briefed him also
about my Complaint against Waglay JP, and Mlambo JP’s almost certain authorship
of the criminal ‘memorandum’ that successfully torpedoed my petition. My said
letter, mentioning this, is annexure ‘A22’; my covering email is ‘A23’; its
acknowledgement by the JSC with an undertaking to pass it to then-Deputy Chief
Justice Zondo is ‘A24’; and, copying the letter to the President, my covering
email to him and its acknowledgment are ‘A25’.
40. It hardly needs emphasizing how exceedingly serious a matter it is that to
cover for and protect a corrupt senior judge, the JSC is itself corruptly
withholding documentary evidence about his extreme misconduct (as alleged and
confirmed to me by two eminently reliable sources) – documents that I’ve duly
requested under PAIA, and which section 32(1)(a) in the Bill of Rights contained
in Chapter 2 of the Constitution entitles me to access as a fundamental civil
right.
41. Under section 14(2) of the Judicial Service Commission Act (‘JSC Act’), the
Chairperson of the JCC receives and examines all new complaints, assesses
whether they are unserious and fit for summary dismissal under section 15; or
are prima facie serious but non-impeachable and justiciable by a single judge
under section 17; or are prima facie impeachable under section 16 – and he or
she deals with them accordingly,
42. The allocation of my manifestly impeachable Complaint to Patricia Goliath
DJP, a single judge, would indicate that then JCC Chairperson Zondo DCJ reckoned
my charge against Waglay JP was serious but non impeachable, judiciable merely
under section17 of the JSC Act, and trivially sanctionable under subsection 8.
43. But quite the contrary, since my Complaint charged Waglay JP with having
committed the supreme judicial offence of betraying his oath as a judge, on any
honest, intelligent and attentive reading Zondo DCJ would have appreciated that
such judicial corruption was eminently impeachable.
44. It follows that Zondo DCJ could not possibly have read my Complaint
thoughtfully before allocating it to a single judge to decide as a non
impeachable matter under section 17. He just pretended to.
45. On 13 March 2023, after another eight months of inaction on my Complaint,
and having by now reached the conclusion that the JSC was not interested in
carrying out its basic statutory function of disciplining delinquent judges and
eliminating corruption in the judiciary, even when squarely documented and
proven beyond any doubt, and that it would not act unless pressed to do so from
above or outside, I prepared and submitted to the Director General of the State
Security Agency (‘SSA DG’) a specimen draft intelligence report entitled
‘JUDICIAL CORRUPTION IN SOUTH AFRICA’ (‘Report’) for delivery to President
Ramaphosa after editing it at will. The Report is ‘A26’, my covering letter
‘A27’, and proof of delivery by courier ‘A28’.
46. My intention in drawing and submitting the Report was to alert the President
to the JSC’s demonstrated unwillingness to address the corruption among our
senior judges that I’d duly reported to it, and to put him on notice that I
consequently proposed referring the matter to the court of public opinion, both
locally and internationally.
47. The Report repeated my entreaty, made many times before, that all claims and
complaints as between me, LASA, the judiciary, the JSC, and the Legal Practice
Council (‘LPC’) be conciliated to a final and global resolution both in my own
and especially in the national interest.
48. This is because I’ve multiple pending and intended future litigations
against both LASA and the JSC which I yearn to drop and put behind me, so as to
move on with my life after fifteen years of bitter struggle trying to obtain
simple justice in my own case, during which I’ve faced barrage after barrage of
retaliatory fire in reprisal, mentioned below, and I’m sick of it all.
49. But the extreme strain and hardship that I and those closest to me have
endured as a result of the colossal judicial and other corruption I’ve run into,
and the destruction of my legal career (see below), have only steeled my
absolute and implacable determination to obtain redress.
50. For complaining in my pleadings in the Labour- and Labour Appeal Courts of
Mlambo JP’s crimes and other acts of corruption committed as Chairperson of
LASA’s Board, and for duly reporting this to the JCC, LASA is trying to get me
disbarred as an advocate, undoubtedly at Mlambo JP’s original instance.
51. My hard-earned professional reputation has already been ruined by the
Society of Advocates of KwaZulu-Natal’s gross mishandling of LASA’s professional
misconduct complaint against me – as recounted in my response to the LPC’s
invitation to respond to the complaint a second time, after the LPC inherited it
from the said Society unresolved. All papers in the matter are accessible
illegal-aid.co.za/LPC.
52. These papers include the LPC’s latest letter to me on 8 November 2024
announcing its decision to come after me on the basis that ‘there is prima facie
evidence that you are guilty of misconduct which warrants misconduct proceedings
to be instituted against you. The Committee has referred the matter to a
Disciplinary Committee for adjudication.’ See ‘A29’.
53. LASA has already succeeded in getting me blacklisted from any acting
appointments as a contract magistrate, having got me summarily sacked from my
former post by alleging to the Magistrates Commission that I was unfit for such
office (because I’d complained of Mlambo JP’s corruption) – without any notice
of the complaint, let alone an opportunity to respond to it. I deal with this in
my said second response delivered to the LPC, accessible at the just-said
website.
54. I should add that to try shutting me down as complainant about the serious
corruption and breakdown of corporate governance at LASA during Mlambo JP’s
tenure as Board Chairperson, LASA applied to the High Court at Pietermaritzburg
to have me (a) banned as a vexatious litigant, so as to block my further access
to our courts to enforce my rights, and (b) interdicted from obtaining any more
of its records, including those it had pledged to turn over in a settlement
agreement signed in court after capitulating to my litigation for them, but then
failed to do, and then positively refused to do in response to my subsequent
application to compel compliance with that agreement. The trial judge quickly
dismissed LASA’s vexatious, baseless case without even calling on me to argue.
55. Like Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka did later on regarding precisely the same
issues before the JCC, centring on LASA’s bogus financial insufficiency defence
for aborting my recruitment, the trial judge recognised LASA’s fraud on the
Labour Court, proved with supporting documents in my very extensive,
multi-volume answering affidavit opposing LASA’s vexatious case.
56. Indeed, taxing LASA’s counsel during his miserable argument, the trial judge
observed on the record: ‘All trial lawyers know that cases are won by perjury
sometimes.’ All papers in the application are accessible at illegal
aid.co.za/VPA.
57. By contrast, Waglay JP never even considered these issues raised in my
petition, let alone grasped them, as the said trial judge in LASA’s vexatious
case and Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka all did very correctly, because he
immediately threw my petition out without reading it, moved to do so by the
criminal ‘memorandum’ that I later discovered in the appeal court file.
58. In addition, there are several major unresolved litigation cost issues,
including as between the JSC and me, which are too dense and insufficiently
relevant to warrant the ink and space required to explain here.
59. Waglay JP’s judicial corruption is canvassed extensively in paragraphs 9,
19–25, 32, 40–44, 66–68, 112–116, 133–134, and 141 of the Report.
60. The Report dealt also with the JCC’s failure to have decided my appeal
(subsequently upheld) against Zondi JA’s reprehensibly cursory dismissal of my
eight complaints about Mlambo JP’s repeated, documented, criminal lies to
Parliament and to the Durban Labour Court; his impeachable lies to the Justice
Minister; and his complicity in LASA’s suppression of duly requested records on
four documented occasions.
61. The SSA DG ignored the Report, so in July 2023 I copied it to the Minister
in the Presidency for State Security. See ‘A30’, and proof of delivery ‘A31’.
When she ignored it too, I copied it directly to the Office of the Presidency
the following month. Which ignored it also. See ‘A32’ and ‘A33’.
62. On 27 November 2023, after independently obtaining a copy of the Report from
a third party unknown to me, and evidently appalled by its contents, United
Democratic Movement leader Hon Bantu Holomisa MP wrote to the Parliamentary
Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence, seeking an inquiry into the unresolved
judicial corruption detailed therein. (He initially missed the information in
the Report’s first and last page footers indicating that I’d prepared it.) His
letter, which I found on the internet, is ‘A34’.
63. Without investigating and assessing for herself the veracity and validity of
my complaints against Waglay JP and Mlambo JP summarised in the Report – to
which complaints, the judges’ responses, and my comments on them in PDF, I’d
provided hyperlinks in the Report for easy access – and despite (a) the word
‘DRAFT’ in upper case prominently watermarked diagonally across all its pages,
and (b) her quite correct understanding noted in her text message to me before
going to print that ‘the footnote on the last page appears to confirm that it
was written by you’ (see ‘A35’), News24 journalist Karyn Maughan claimed in the
newspapers two days later that the Report was a ‘fake’ in which I’d made ‘false
“judicial corruption” claims’. See ‘A36’.
64. Responding a few days later at the Judges Conference to media enquiries
about the Report, then-Chief Justice Zondo massively amplified the false
narrative fabricated by this useless journalist by lending his supreme judicial
authority to it.
65. Putting his arm around Mlambo JP’s shoulder, so to say, and closing
professional ranks with this utterly corrupt judge, Zondo CJ reflexively
defensively dismissed and condemned my extraordinarily serious judicial
misconduct complaints, also without having bothered to assess their veracity and
validity upon any evaluation of the evidence I’d provided, and cast me as a
leprous reprobate from whom the judiciary and the country needed protection. The
newspapers uncritically echoed: ‘Zondo, Mlambo dismantle fake judicial
corruption accusations, urge public to “protect judges”’. See ‘A37’. And again,
referring to the Report, ‘Raymond Zondo shoots down accusations of captured
judiciary’. See ‘A38’.
66. Fortunately unswayed by the extreme prejudice against me and my complaints
in favour of Mlambo JP that Zondo CJ had so incredibly irresponsibly,
improperly, indeed unlawfully fanned (à la the charge that got Hlophe JP
impeached and removed), even as my complaints were still pending decision by the
JCC, Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka duly found on 19 February 2024 a couple of
months later that I’d indeed made a facially answerable case against Mlambo JP
on the documentary and other evidence I’d presented in support of my four of
most serious criminal and other charges, and recommended that the President
convene a Judicial Conduct Tribunal to try them. Material excerpts of their
decision marked up for relevance are ‘A39’. The full decision is accessible at:
corrupt judges.co.za/JCC_Appeal_Committee_Adv_Brink_v_Mlambo_JP_19_Feb_2024.pdf.
67. How the JSC thereafter grotesquely irregularly, prejudicially and unlawfully
disposed of the matter, inter alia by deliberately violating the audi alteram
partem rule – thereby exposing the proceedings to judicial review (coming up)
and setting aside by the High Court (inevitable), as Zondo CJ himself repeatedly
warned his fellow commissioners during the virtual conference to discuss the
case – and by malevolently defaming me variously as a racist and an extortionist
to poison the conference and bias the other commissioners against me, thereby
thumbing the scale in Mlambo JP’s favour, is noted at corrupt judges.co.za,
where the transcript of the JSC’s shambolic conference is posted.
68. Despite:
• the delivery of my Complaint against Waglay JP way back in July 2017, and the
JSC’s acknowledgment of it a few weeks later;
• the copies of my Complaint that I thrice provided the JSC in June 2018,
February 2019, and February 2020 at its then-Secretaries’ repeated requests;
• my several written appeals to the then Chief Justice and Chairperson of the
JSC; to the then-Deputy Chief Justice and Chairperson of the JCC; and to the
then- Secretary of the JSC that my Complaint be decided after so many years’ of
mounting delay;
• my application to the High Court to compel the JSC’s response to my illegally
and unconstitutionally ignored PAIA request, inter alia, for the record of the
allocation of my Complaint for decision, identifying the judge in question – to
which application the JSC substantially capitulated in its answering papers;
• my specimen draft intelligence report both on judicial corruption in South
Africa and the JSC’s failure to resolve my complaints about it, despite my
repeated provision of replacement copies and my multiple written appeals for
action, which Report I’d submitted to the SSA DG, then to the responsible
Minister, and then to the President;
• the clear signal from the grant of my appeal in the Mlambo JP case by Justices
Nkabinde and Makgoka as regards my criminal and other capital complaints against
him that my Complaint against Waglay JP was likely also to be extraordinarily
serious and well founded on the documentary and other evidence adduced against
him –
my Complaint against Waglay JP remains undecided all these years later.
69. This very long delay is manifestly unreasonable, unlawful and
unconstitutional, and it’s frustrating the very object of Chapter 2 of the JSC
Act, namely to provide for ‘OVERSIGHT OVER JUDICIAL CONDUCT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
OF JUDICIAL OFFICERS’.
70. Besides this, the JCC’s inaction is prejudicing me personally, and on
several scores.
71. The heading of my Complaint, namely ‘First Complaint’ – like the heading of
the first of my eight complaints against Mlambo JP – unambiguously implied that
I intended filing at least one more complaint against Waglay JP; and indeed, I
intended making a second one against him for fraudulently pretending that Denis
Davis and Roland Sutherland JJA had sat with him to discuss, consider and decide
my petition for leave to appeal the dismissal of my labour case, and that they’d
unanimously concurred that it was unmerited.
72. In truth and in fact, I found that he’d corruptly dismissed my petition on
his own, alone.
73. Court records that I obtained during my thorough investigation of the
irregular circumstances in which my petition had been prematurely dismissed
established incontrovertibly that, contrary to Waglay JP’s fraudulent
dissimulation to me about this, he and the said two other appeal judges named in
the dismissal order were all presiding in distant courts in distant cities on
the day the order falsely alleged they deliberated and decided to reject my
petition together.
74. Supported by the said court records categorically exposing and proving this,
I detailed it all in an application to the High Court at Pietermaritzburg for
unrelated relief against LASA. The papers are accessible at corrupt
judges.co.za/Pillay_J. (During LASA’s counsel’s argument of its above-mentioned
vexatious application against me, the judge mentioned that he’d drawn the case
file at his own initiative and studied the papers. He was evidently impressed
and perturbed by the documented facts of the case I’d made, because he
vehemently rebuked LASA, via its counsel, for its iniquity in wrongly seeking
and taking a punitive costs order against me in that case, which had been
dismissed not on the merits, never considered, but on account only of an
unanticipated technical hitch regarding formal service, even though LASA had
filed an answering affidavit responding to my case made in my application papers
which I’d emailed to it well before the hearing. Point is, the judge recognised
the horror of my case on the documented facts set out in my founding affidavit,
and its extreme implications for the integrity of our judiciary.)
75. In view of the JCC’s failure to decide my Complaint, after so many appeals
for action I’d made to the Chief Justice and JSC Chairperson, to the Deputy
Chief Justice and JCC Chairperson, and to the JSC Secretary, and my repeated
provision of duplicate copies of the papers, and the look of it that the JSC was
determined to run cover for Waglay JP by just sitting on the Complaint about his
impeachable judicial corruption and leaving it undecided year after year – in
other words that the JSC was itself corrupt – I was put off drawing and filing
this second intended criminal and impeachable complaint against Waglay JP,
because I understood that the JCC would have given it no more attention than my
first Complaint, which is to say zero, and that drawing and filing it would have
been a total waste of my time, as before.
76. It would have been as predictably futile as going to a corrupt police
station headed by a corrupt station commander to make a corruption complaint
about a corrupt police officer. This was the state of the JSC before you took
over.
77. Indeed, the JSC’s unbelievably asinine and shamelessly dishonest claim on 6
May 2024 that ‘there is no prima facie evidence to substantiate the allegations’
made in my four most serious criminal and other capital complaints against
Mlambo JP – which Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka had contrariwise found well-made
and answerable before a Judicial Conduct Tribunal in their comprehensive 42-page
review and analysis of the documentary and other ‘prima facie evidence’ that I’d
indeed adduced (‘A39’) – only fortified my conclusion that the JSC led by Zondo
CJ was itself hopelessly corrupt and determined to cover for corrupt judges in
our country. The JSC’s said foolish and meretricious claim to me, and its
similar media statement about it, are accessible at corrupt-judges.co.za.
78. There are several telling indications that the JSC members, to whom the
Secretary made available the 811–page, indexed and paginated bundle of case
documents in PDF via a hyperlink before the conference, didn’t study it all
before the the discussion of the case; but this is a matter for my intended
review application, as is the majority’s decision, 9 3, to deliberately
disregard the audi alteram partem rule, in the teeth of Zondo CJ’s repeated
warnings against committing this obviously reviewable irregularity, by denying
me the opportunity to reply to Mlambo JP’s 223 pages of new evidence, new
documents, and fresh slander of me, grossly irregularly and unlawfully woven
into what ought to have been only his submissions on Justices Nkabinde and
Makgoka’s recommendation against him following their consideration of the
evidence presented in my four most serious criminal and other capital
complaints, in his responses, and in my comments on it.
79. Of course, all this sickening illegality by the JSC, as well as some of its
members’ repeated wanton defamation of me during its conference, transpired
before you succeeded Zondo CJ as Chief Justice and Chairperson of the JSC later
in the year.
80. To return to the personal prejudice I’m suffering due to the JCC’s failure
to decide my Complaint: After Waglay JP corruptly tossed my petition for leave
to appeal against the dismissal of my labour case, I made several PAIA requests
for LASA records, confidently anticipating – correctly it turned out – that
they’d contradict, expose, and refute the many blatant lies that then LASA
National Operations Executive Brian Nair told the judge during the trial; and I
had to sue repeatedly to compel LASA to turn these duly requested records over
to me. Ultimately, moments before the argument of my first five court
applications set down together, LASA conceded them in the courtroom, and a
couple of months later delivered many of the records pledged to me in its
surrender treaty signed there.
81. My relentless pursuit of these records finally revealed to me the stunning,
quite unexpected truth as to why my recruitment to LASA’s top legal professional
post in KwaZulu-Natal had been silently aborted after I’d been shortlisted and
interviewed and then duly selected and recommended for it – aborted without
authority, off the record, contrary to the express wishes of the Justice
Ministry and Justice Portfolio Committee as regards the filling of such critical
vacant posts, and under cover of very different contradictory excuses, as
Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka noted very correctly in their decision upholding
my appeal in the Mlambo JP case (‘A39’).
82. The selection panel’s full, uncensored recommendation report that I finally
forced out of LASA by suing for it, and by proceeding physically all the way to
court for it, revealed the real reason I wasn’t appointed to the post. Rather
than unfair discrimination against me in LASA’s national office, as I’d
incorrectly surmised and pleaded in the Labour Court on the then-available
evidence, it turned out to be just everyday jobs-for-pals recruitment corruption
in favour of my rival applicant for the post, a former repeatedly appointed
acting judge of the Labour Court. (The plan to slip him into the post instead of
me – even though he didn’t meet the qualifying criteria, and had accordingly
been rejected by the selection panel and eliminated from further consideration
as a candidate – was stymied by my unrelenting pursuit of my appointment, after
LASA’s Legal Resources Executive inadvertently let slip to me several silent
months after my interview that I was indeed the candidate who’d been selected
and recommended for the post.)
83. To conceal from me this critically relevant, pivotal information about my
rival candidate contained in the selection panel’s recommendation report before
the trial of my labour case (his connection with the Labour Court headed by
Mlambo JP at the material time), LASA had redacted it by blacking it out with a
Koki marker pen – in criminal contravention of section 90 of PAIA. This was the
ethical character of the people running LASA at the time.
84. Financial records that I got out of LASA via PAIA after Waglay JP threw my
petition out proved absolutely that its budgetary insufficiency alibi for
aborting my appointment, pleaded by it in the Labour Court and successfully sold
to the trial judge, had been totally false and a fraud on the court. (In his
judgment, the trial judge didn’t mention that LASA’s single witness Nair had
also advanced under oath a completely different, contradictory reason for the
illegal backroom abortion of my appointment.)
85. These financial records showed contrariwise that the post for which I’d been
selected and recommended had in truth and in fact been fully funded at the
material time. (The labour judge believed and accepted Nair’s blatant lie about
LASA not having the budget to fill the post for which I’d been picked, even as
he noted in his judgment that he’d been a less than honest witness. See the
judgment at illegal aid.co.za.)
86. Upon disgorging the said financial records unequivocally refuting LASA’s
financial justification for not hiring me, and then discovering the amazing
information about my rival applicant for the post in the now-complete and
uncensored recommendation report for which I’d successfully sued, I resolved to
return to the Labour Court with an application under common law for rescission
of judgment on the grounds that subsequently discovered documents revealed that
LASA’s successful financial insufficiency defence had been a fraud on the court,
and that LASA had criminally concealed from me my true cause of action, namely
simple recruitment corruption in the form of nepotism.
87. But obviously for as long as Waglay JP headed the very court that I was
constrained to look to for justice, and my judicial corruption Complaint against
him remained unresolved, I couldn’t safely and confidently proceed with my
intended rescission application there.
88. And even though Waglay JP has now vacated the presidency of the Labour- and
Labour Appeal Courts, I’m still unable to bring that application until the JCC
has prosecuted his judicial corruption, detailed, documented and proved in my
Complaint, and he’s been held to account for it, because if my rescission
application is refused, it will go on petition before Acting Judge President
Edwin Molahlehi, a member of LASA’s Board between 2006 and 2014, which is to say
at all material times. Like other Board members, he was unresponsive and
indifferent to the corruption at LASA pertinently brought to his and their
attention.
89. Since it appears Goliath DJP is unwilling to decide my Complaint, I request
that current JCC Chairperson Mbuyiseli Madlanga DCJ reassess it, determine it to
be impeachable, and refer it to a Tribunal for decision under section 16 of the
JSC Act, as the documented and incontestable facts clearly and obviously
warrant.
90. I know of at least two precedents for the JCC Chairperson removing undecided
complaints from judges to whom they’d been originally allocated and reassigning
them.
91. On 29 March 2019, Betty Molemela JA (as she then was) was appointed to
decide my eight complaints against Mlambo JP. See ‘A40’. But on 21 February
2021, Zondi JA was appointed to do so instead. See ‘A41’. (In its answering
affidavit in my PAIA application mentioned above, the JSC told me that no record
exists of the JCC Chairperson’s decision to substitute the one judge for the
other. See ‘A21’, paragraph 20.)
92. And whereas the JSC told me Margaret Victor J was one of the three judges on
the JCC Appeal Committee who considered my appeal against Zondi JA’s dismissal
of my complaints – see ‘A42’ – in response to my PAIA request, and then
necessary litigation for, ‘Any record identifying the JCC judges appointed to
decide Brink’s appeal against Zondi JA’s dismissal of his eight complaints
against Mlambo JP on 8 June 2021’ (item 24), her name appears nowhere in the
Appeal Committee’s majority decision to uphold my appeal. Instead, Rammaka
Mathopo J bobbed up mysteriously as the Appeal Committee’s new third member (see
‘A39’, first page), eagerly championing Mlambo JP in his minority decision and
voting to dismiss my appeal with the objective of assisting Mlambo JP get away
with his crimes and other impeachable misconduct. Mathopo J’s disgraceful
decision is accessible at corrupt judges.co.za.
93. Incidentally, the JCC Appeal Committee, comprising Justices Nkabinde,
Makgoka and Victor, met at the Constitutional Court on 10-11 December 2021 to
debate and decide my appeal. Its information to me about this is ‘A43’. Since
Mathopo J wasn’t there and didn’t participate in the conference, according to
the JCC, his dissent in Mlambo JP’s favour, which Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka
roundly criticised for its elementary errors, was ireegular, pro non scripto and
legally irrelevant. But it practically worked just as intended to corrupt the
JSC’s later consideration of the matter, inasmuch as the JSC bought wholesale
Mathopo J’s false contention that I hadn’t set up an answerable case against
Mlambo JP on my criminal and other capital charges against him, ludicrously
contradicting Justices Nkabinde and Makgoka’s meticulously careful and extensive
opposite finding.
94. I record that I’ve no objection to Madlanga DCJ dealing with this matter as
Chairperson of the JCC, even though he represented LASA as senior counsel at the
first pre-trial conference in my labour case against it, shortly before his
selection and appointment to the Constitutional Court (about which he had an
amicable chat during a break). This was well over a decade ago, and I’ve no
reason to think he harbours any bias against me. Nor do I have any reason to
doubt his integrity.
95. As to your own integrity, there’s no question in my mind that when, as then
JCC Chairperson, before your appointment as Chief Justice and assumption of the
office of JSC Chairperson ex lege, you assured the JSC at the conclusion of your
JCC Report for the period January to December 2023 that, ‘The JCC is discharging
its mandate to deal with complaints diligently and expeditiously and commits to
continue doing so’, you were entirely unaware of my still undecided Complaint
made way back in July 2017. See ‘A44’.
96. Your report duly includes the number of pending complaints against Supreme
Court of Appeal and Constitutional Court judges, but strangely omits mention of
my very long-outstanding Complaint against the erstwhile head of the Labour
Appeal Court, Waglay JP.
97. In other words, although the first part of your quoted statement to the JSC
was objectively false and gravely misled the JSC, I don’t doubt that you
subjectively meant your report to be perfectly truthful.
98. But having been apprised by this letter of the JCC’s outrageous, illegal and
unconstitutional delay in dealing with my supremely impeachable Complaint
against Waglay JP, please advise me by 30 March 2025, two months hence, as to
when I can expect the appointment of a Judicial Conduct Tribunal to try it under
section 16 of the JSC Act. (If more time is needed to consider the matter, I’ll
gladly agree to any reasonable request for an extension.)
99. You’ll surely agree with the Sunday Times editorial published by TimesLIVE
online on 20 January 2025 that ‘Upholding integrity in the judiciary is
crucial.’ See ‘A45’.
100. Now that you’ve succeeded Zondo CJ as JSC Chairperson and have your eye on
the case I’m hoping my Complaint will be dealt with ‘diligently and
expeditiously’ from here on, and that I won’t need to sue the JSC to compel
this, more than seven-and-a-half years since I lodged it.
Yours sincerely
ADV ANTHONY BRINK
anthonybrink.sa@gmail.com | 083 779 4174