The JSC’s actions during judges’ interviews must help, not hinder the judiciary

The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) will meet for its biannual judges’ interview session from Monday, 13 April through Friday, 17 April 2026. They will interview 31 candidates to fill 15 vacancies at superior courts nationwide, including the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), the Competition Appeal Court, the Land Court and the Eastern and Western Cape High Court divisions. Significantly, they will also interview Judge Aubrey Ledwaba as the sole candidate for judge president of the Gauteng High Court division – the busiest court in South Africa.

The judiciary is under enormous public scrutiny, not only for the conduct of individual judges, but also for courts’ underperformance in delivering judgments on time. As perception surveys also show, public trust is waning. These issues will loom large over the JSC as it undertakes these interviews. Through its actions next week, the JSC will indicate if it will help or harm the judiciary on these issues.

Reruns of Supreme Court of Appeal and Eastern Cape High Court interviews

First up, the JSC will deal with filling three vacancies at the SCA. This is essentially a rerun of the October 2025 JSC session, during which the JSC reached a deadlock and could not choose a single candidate due to a faulty voting system. Four of the six current candidates were interviewed in October.

In a written submission to the JSC, Judges Matter has called for the JSC to revise its voting procedure and aim to select judges through consensus first before a vote by secret ballot. Only where consensus cannot be reached should a vote be considered. Even then, there must first be a process of elimination of candidates by consensus before a final vote is taken. This would immediately bring rationality to the JSC’s selection but also allow a more efficient process of selecting only the best candidates for appointment as judges. The current system of subjecting every selection to a secret vote yields irrational outcomes such as no appointment even when suitable candidates are available. It is also hard to distil from it reasons that one candidate was selected over another.

The JSC will also interview 10 candidates for three vacancies in the Eastern Cape High Court division (in Mthatha and Makhanda). These interviews were meant to take place in October 2025 but were cancelled at the last minute, under threat of litigation from a candidate who had been unfairly prejudiced during the shortlisting process. The candidates are three senior magistrates, three advocates, two attorneys and two law professors, which is an unusually impressive diversity of talent.

Questions for the Gauteng judge president candidate

Next, the JSC will interview Ledwaba as the sole candidate for judge president of the Gauteng High Court division. He has been acting in the role since the now Deputy Chief Justice Dunstan Mlambo was promoted in August 2025. Since 2013 he has been the senior deputy judge president, responsible for running the Pretoria High Court.

He is widely respected by both judges and legal practitioners for his collaborative leadership approach, as confirmed by nominations sent to the JSC by retired Justice Edwin Cameron and advocate Myron Dewrance SC, former chairperson of the General Council of the Bar.

Ledwaba might face awkward questions at the JSC over October 2025 testimony by “Witness A” and “Witness B” at the Madlanga Commission. They state that there was alleged impropriety in Judge Ledwaba’s handling of a bail appeal application involving alleged underworld boss Katiso “KT” Molefe. Other than stating that Molefe had allegedly set aside R2-million as a bribe for a nebulous group of “police, prosecutors and judicial officers”, and remarks about Ledwaba’s questions at the bail appeal hearing, none of the police witnesses has produced any evidence to substantiate these explosive allegations.

In his application to the JSC, signed on 5 December 2025, Ledwaba strongly denies the allegations, labelling them as “unreliable”, “unsupported” “hearsay” and “conjecture”. He confirms that he has written to the Madlanga Commission, which replied that it would deal with these allegations “fairly and responsibly” in the interim report to be filed in December 2025, and a final report issued before the JSC interviews in April 2026. The commission’s interim report has not been made public, nor has Ledwaba been invited by the commission to either submit a written statement or testify orally. None of the police witnesses has been called to substantiate their allegations either.

From past practice, the JSC has set up an objections committee chaired by advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC. Its role is to receive written objections, request substantiation from the objector, together with a response from the candidate, and advise the rest of the JSC on the validity of that objection. Only valid objections are then put to the candidate in the public interview. In this case, unless the interim report of the Madlanga Commission indicates the police witnesses have substantiated their allegations with evidence, the objections committee is likely to overrule the objection.

A new page for the Western Cape High Court?

The JSC will interview a record 11 candidates for five vacancies at the Western Cape High Court, which in recent years has lost many of its senior judges through promotions, retirements and the impeachment of former Judge President John Hlophe. This JSC session will be the first for Judge President Nolwazi Mabindla-Boqwana, who started in the role in January 2025 and has made a notable change in the culture of a high court division that’s often in the news for bad reasons. Eight of the candidates are senior advocates, two are senior attorneys and one a senior magistrate – and all have at least 20 years’ legal experience, which is impressive.

The JSC will interview candidates for the specialist courts. Johannesburg Judge Fiona Dippenaar is the sole candidate for the economically important Competition Appeal Court, which, due to structural problems, is operating under capacity.

Equally important is the Land Court, where the JSC will interview two candidates for a single judge vacancy. This will be the first judge appointment under the new expanded jurisdiction of the Land Court brought on by 2024 legislative amendments. It will be interesting to see how the JSC assesses candidates on the court’s expanded scope of work.

The JSC’s constitutional functions

As the JSC begins its first interview, looming over its head will be a recent report from the Office of the Chief Justice highlighting that a record 302 judgments are outstanding for more than six months at courts nationwide. This should add impetus and urgency to the JSC’s work in filling the current vacancies. But it should not stop there.

In written submissions over the past few years, Judges Matter has consistently called on the JSC to take up a pro-active, strategic “human resources” function for the judiciary. The JSC must actively manage the talent pool of judges, pre-empt career movements (especially retirements) and undertake targeted recruitment that matches the skills of aspirant judges with the needs and workloads of the courts to which they will be appointed. To do this work, the JSC should be armed with crucial information such as the current skills base of judges, upcoming retirements, caseload trends, crime trends data from the police, economic data from Statistics South Africa and infrastructure plans from the departments of Justice and Public Works. Any good HR department does this.

The JSC should also activate its long-neglected constitutional function, in terms of section 178(5) of the Constitution, of advising the national government on “any matter relating to the judiciary”. It must advocate for the increase in the number of judicial posts to match the size and complexity of the South African economy and society. After all, an independent, efficient and effective judiciary is vital for public safety and economic growth.

The judiciary is under enormous scrutiny at the moment. The JSC’s actions this week will tell if it helps or hinders efforts to regain public trust in the judiciary. DM

Mbekezeli Benjamin is research and advocacy officer at Judges Matter, a transparency project of the Democratic Governance and Rights Unit at the University of Cape Town which monitors the South African judiciary.