Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe will next week face an inquiry into his fitness to be a judge – 12 years after he allegedly tried to influence two Constitutional Court justices to rule in favour of then ANC president Jacob Zuma.

The JSC confirmed yesterday that a Judicial Conduct Tribunal, consisting of retired Gauteng Judge Joop Labuschagne, SCA Judge Tati Makgoka and attorney Nishani Pather, would hear the complaint lodged against Hlophe by the country's highest court in 2008.

Legal writer Karyn Maughan, in a News24 report, says the hearing comes as Hlophe faces the possibility of a separate impeachment inquiry for allegedly assaulting a fellow judge, verbally abusing his deputy, Patricia Goliath, and abusing his power.

In next week's hearing, he is accused of attempting to sway two Constitutional Court justices to swing a pivotal ruling in favour of Zuma, at a time when the aspirant President was facing prosecution for arms deal-linked corruption.

At the time, Hlophe framed the complaint against him as driven by improper, and potentially racist, motives linked to his authorship of a 2004 ‘Racism Report’ – in which he accused multiple white judges and advocates of being racist.

The Heads of Court had evaluated Hlophe's racism report and found that his allegations ‘against individual judges and some of the members of the legal profession have, in general, been refuted by the persons concerned’.

Hlophe, however, stood by his accusations, which he claimed were the true reason that the Constitutional Court alleged that he had tried and failed to persuade Justices Bess Nkabinde and Chris Jafta to rule that the search and seizure raids conducted on Zuma and his lawyers – in which the Scorpions reportedly seized 93 000 pages of evidence – were not lawful.

Evidence from Nkabinde and Jafta was that the Judge President told them both separately that the SCA – which had dismissed Zuma's challenges to the legality of the warrants – had got it wrong.

According to Jafta, Hlophe told him that the cases involving Zuma needed to be looked at ‘properly’ because he believed Zuma was being persecuted, just as he (Hlophe) had been persecuted.

Jafta said Hlophe told him ‘sesithembele kinina’, meaning ‘we pin our hopes on you’.

The News24 report says in her evidence, Nkabinde said Hlophe had visited her in chambers and started talking about the Zuma case. Nkabinde said she responded by snapping, ‘my brother, you know that you cannot talk about this case. You have not been involved in the case, you have not sat on it and you are not a member of the court to come and talk about the case’.

She testified that Hlophe had then told her that he did not mean to interfere with her work, but he went on to explain ‘that the point is that there is no case against Mr Zuma’.

He repeated that ‘Mr Zuma has been persecuted, just as he was persecuted’.

During his interview with the JSC sub-committee, Hlophe denied much of the evidence given by Jafta and Nkabinde, and suggested that they may have misconstrued certain of his comments.

He categorically denied trying to influence either of them.

Full News24 report