Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe’s legal representative, Barnabas Xulu, has been found in contempt of six civil court orders, slapped with a R30 000 fine, instructed to surrender his Porsche 911 Carrera and sentenced to 30 days imprisonment, suspended for three years.

Over and above this, notes Marianne Thamm in a Daily Maverick report, acting Western Cape High Court Judge M Pangarker ordered Xulu and his firm, Barnabas Xulu Incorporated (BXI), to pay the Department of Environment, Forestry & Fisheries’ legal costs and has also referred the judgment to the Legal Practice Council.

Pangarker said that the Constitution recognised the supremacy of the rule of law as one of the core values upon which SA was founded.

‘Civil contempt, which is at the heart of the matter, is the crime of disrespect to the court and the rule of law.’

Citing a SCA ruling, the judge said that contempt of a court order ‘is the violation of the dignity, authority and reputation of the court’.

Xulu and his firm BXI had flouted Section 165(5) of the Constitution and had ‘acted with impunity and the utmost contempt and it is of great concern that an attorney has conducted himself in continued wilful defiance and bad faith in the manner set out in this judgment’, said the judge.

The attorney’s repeated non-compliance with the various court orders ‘makes a mockery of judicial authority’.

Evidence also pointed to ‘the ineluctable conclusion that Mr Xulu and BXI have appropriated to themselves the right to disobey court orders which they believe they are entitled to disobey as and when they see fit’.

Xulu’s legal representative argued that the department had set out ‘to embarrass BXI and Mr Xulu’ and that he had been harassed and his ‘dignity undermined.’

Full Daily Maverick report