By Umamah Bakharia

This week the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) will interview four candidates for the position of Chief Justice. The interviews will take place from 1 February to 4 February.

The four nominees are: Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, President of the Supreme Court of Appeal Mandisa Maya, Constitutional Court Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, and Gauteng Judge President Dunstan Mlambo.

President Cyril Ramaphosa nominated them in November last year after considering the recommendations of a panel by Judge Navanethem Pillay.

A full bench of the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg last year ordered that the JSC interviews and deliberations for the appointment of two ConCourt justices must be rerun, after the Council of the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC) challenged the constitutionality of that interview and deliberation process – which it slammed as a “sham”.

Radio Islam spoke to CASAC’s Lawson Naidoo on the councils decision to challenge the constitutionality of the interview process.

“What we saw in the April round of interviews last year for candidates seeking appointment to the constitutional court, was that some members of the commission were using the occasion to settle personal political scores,” says Naidoo.

He adds that the CASAC felt this was an abuse of the JSC process.

“The questions were clearly not [defined] to determine the suitability of those candidates and it was on that basis that we challenged the deficiency,” says Naidoo.

CASAC got access to the ‘rule 53 record’ of the proceedings of the JSC including the deliberations behind closed doors which indicated that the then Chief Justice Moegeng Moegeng, counted no proper deliberations on the merits of each of the candidates but “he merely produced a list of five candidates out of nowhere”.

“The commission has failed in its constitutional duty to apply its mind objectively to the merits of each of those candidates,” says Naidoo.