Cape Town - The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) has forwarded the name of Cape Town Regional court magistrate Constance Noluthando Nziweni to President Cyril Ramaphosa for the position of Judge of the Western Cape Division of the High Court.
It was second time lucky for Nziweni whose October 2021 application for the job was unsuccessful. Three other candidates had been up for the single position.
During the interviews Nziweni said she had produced more than 30 written judgments, seven of which had been reported in law reports and that she had been an acting judge in the division over a period of seven terms.
In its comments on candidates nominated for judicial positions, the General Council of the Bar of South Africa (GCBSA) said of Nziweni: “The candidate’s experience appears to be primarily in criminal law. However, the candidate’s judgments in civil matters show that she has a sound grasp of civil litigation, including delict, contract and matrimonial law.”
The GCBSA said the reason for Nziweni’s limited experience in constitutional law was most probably because of the limited scope in jurisdiction of the Magistrate’s Court when it came to constitutional issues.
Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe, who participated in the interviews, asked Nziweni what she would say to those who said she had limited experience outside criminal law.
Nziweni said she’d done commercial law in the regional court as well as at the high court. “I don’t know what more exposure I should get.”
Asked by Commissioner Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC what she would do to improve her constitutional and administrative law knowledge, Nziweni said she was willing to read widely, and had “infinite capacity for research”.
The unsuccessful candidates this time around have all, like Nziweni, sat as acting judges at the Western Cape High Court.
They included advocate Mohamed Salie SC, for whom this was also a second attempt. An attorney for 13 years before joining the Cape Bar, Salie became senior counsel in 2015 and has acted as a judge since 2017.
Others were Bellville Regional Magistrate Mas-Udah Pangarker who is a former attorney in private practice and at Legal Aid and former Stellenbosch University law lecturer and labour consultant, advocate Alma de Wet.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za