AfriForum takes acting judge to court over the withholding of a court ruling
AfriForum instructed its legal team to bring a mandamus application against an acting judge in the High Court in Pietermaritzburg regarding the withholding of a court verdict where the matter was heard more than a year ago. The case between AfriForum and the AbaQulusi Local Municipality was heard on 19 August 2022 by acting judge Sabela, but despite several letters to the judge in which AfriForum demanded a verdict, and even after the judge-president instructed him to deliver a judgment, no judgment has yet been delivered. AfriForum has meanwhile received written permission from Judge Thoba Poyo-Dlwati, the Judge-President of KwaZulu-Natal, to bring the mandamus application to compel Sabela to deliver a verdict.
In the mandamus application, AfriForum will ask the court to compel Sabela to deliver a judgment within 10 days from the day the court order is issued and that Sabela must also pay the legal costs in his personal capacity.
In the original court case that was heard last year, AfriForum tried to get an interdict against the AbaQulusi Municipality to stop the awarding of an illegal tender, where the cutting and sale of a pine plantation is at stake. The Municipality did not follow the necessary processes to obtain the tender.
“The plantation is the property of the Municipality, but there are contractors who are now stripping the plantation and selling the trees, while the profit ends up directly in individuals’ pockets. We would like to stop the felling of the plantation because the necessary tender processes were not followed, but with the delay in the verdict they have been continuously cutting down and selling these assets of the municipality for more than a year now,” says Eugene van Aswegen, AfriForum’s Provincial Coordinator for KwaZulu-Natal.
According to judicial norms and standards, judgments must be delivered within three months, but despite AfriForum’s many attempts to obtain the judgment, this has already been delayed for more than a year. “We have already sent many letters and requests to the judge’s office and to the court manager to get a judgment, after which the court’s judge-president instructed Sabela to deliver a judgment by 18 February 2023. However, that didn’t happen either. We then took the next step and made a request to the judge-president in which we asked for permission to litigate against Sabela. The judge-president has now granted AfriForum permission to start this litigation process,” says Jaco Grobbelaar, AfriForum’s Head for the Central Region.
“AfriForum will continue to fight for justice in the courts and thus protect the interests of its members and the communities to which they belong,” concludes Grobbelaar.
