Weekender
Panel cleared deputy registrar of defamation Franny Rabkin, The Weekender, Johannesburg, 27 June 2009 THE University of Cape Town's (UCT's) deputy registrar for legal services, Paul Ngobeni, maintains that he was subjected to a disciplinary hearing by the university because of his support for Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe. The accusations against Ngobeni fell into two broad categories. The second was a group of charges related to language used by Ngobeni with his colleagues. Two of the three lawyers conducting the inquiry agreed that Ngobeni's language was "simply not belonging in the workplace". But two out of three on the panel said there should be no sanction at all against Ngobeni, while one said he should receive a final written warning. The first charge was that Ngobeni "conducted (himself) in a manner that prejudiced the efficient administration of the university" because of an article he authored, published in the Cape Times in October 2007 relating to Hlophe. Ngobeni has been one of the Western Cape judge president' s most outspoken supporters. In his Cape Times article, he took issue with calls "by some lawyers and academics" for Hlophe to consider resigning from his position following the findings of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) in the Oasis matter. The JSC investigated a complaint against Hlophe that he had received unauthorised payments from the Oasis company and that he then granted Oasis permission to sue a fellow judge, Siraj Desai. The JSC decided that there was insufficient evidence against Hlophe to proceed with a formal i nquiry. However, it expressed "dissatisfaction with some of Hlophe's explanations". The JSC's decision prompted intense debate in the legal community - some calling on Hlophe to resign and others saying that the decision should be respected. One of the responses was a letter to the Cape Times by 14 law professors, which called on Hlophe to "consider whether his continuation in high judicial office . will not further damage our constitutional democracy". The letter also expressed dissatisfaction with how the matter had been dealt with by the JSC. In Ngobeni's subsequent article, he argued the Oasis matter was merely a question of a conflict of interest and, while Hlophe should not have granted Oasis permission to sue Desai, this was not impeachable gross misconduct. UCT said it took issue with some of Ngobeni's statements, including when he said: "Of course, Hlophe's racist detractors are hell-bent on ignoring legal principles in their rush to lynch him. They would have gladly made very sophisticated arguments in his defence if Hlophe were white." But Ngobeni insists the university's real issue was that he wrote the article. In its charges against Ngobeni, UCT said that he "accused the professorial members of the faculty of law, including the dean, of being racist, of misleading the public, of having a secret agenda to undermine blacks in higher judicial positions and of rushing to lynch the judge president". The university said this was calculated to denigrate or defame members of the law faculty, harmed Ngobeni's relationship with them and affected his ability to function in his position. The majority panelists, Steven Kahanovitz and Kevin Hollenbach, found that to call a person racist and to accuse them "rushing to lynch" Hlophe "could constitute defamatory remarks in our law". They said Ngobeni had conceded as much during evidence. But they said to show defamation, UCT must establish that the statements were directed towards its law professors. This, they held, the university had not done. At the hearing, two UCT law professors gave evidence against Ngobeni - former dean Hugh Corder and public law professor Halton Cheadle. According to the panel's findings, Corder and Cheadle believed the article to be "a considered opinion piece". But "what they didn't like about the article was that it attributed to them racial motives for the position they had taken in that debate. They considered for that reason the article was defamatory." The panel said Ngobeni readily said that he did not believe either Corder or Cheadle to be racist. In fact, Ngobeni expressed admiration for Cheadle's contribution to the struggle against apartheid. The majority discharged this charge due to an "absence of proof" that Ngobeni's comments in his article were directed towards UCT's law professors. Thabani Masuku penned a minority opinion, saying UCT should not have even brought this charge against Ngobeni because he was exercising his constitutional right to freedom of expression and had simply contributed to the debate in his private capacity, as had others. From: http://www.theweekender.co.za/article.aspx?ID=BD4A1024631 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
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