The Legal Practice Council (LPC) has struck off only four crooked practitioners in the Eastern Cape out of 118 attorneys nationally who have been booted from the profession since 2018.

A Daily Dispatch report says the Eastern Cape LPC has initiated a disciplinary inquiry into disgraced Komani attorney Zoleka Ponoane, who colluded with a Herschel magistrate in 2012 to actively rewrite a judgment that was favourable to her six clients.

The High Court described her behaviour as ‘unprecedented in the annals of the judiciary’.

When asked why no action was taken against her and why she was allowed to continue to practise as an attorney, despite the findings of the High Court, the LPC said a disciplinary process had been instituted.

Given that Ponoane lost her application for leave to appeal the High Court’s setting aside of the Herschel Magistrate’s Court ruling, the LPC confirmed ‘the matter is now with our provincial office who are handling a disciplinary process’.

According to the report, the four Eastern Cape attorneys struck off since 2018 after bringing disgrace to the profession are Mzwandile Bobotyana, described by the High Court as systematically engaging in naked theft and fraud in a class of his own, who was struck from the roll of attorneys in October 2020; Xolani Mvulana, struck from the roll in October 2019; and Siyakudumisa Mlunguza and Barend Terblanche, both struck off in November 2018.

In total, the LPC nationally struck from the roll 118 attorneys while a further 101 were suspended pending further investigation.

Out of 219 attorneys struck off or suspended from practising across the country, 105 were from Gauteng, 51 from KZN, 12 from the Western Cape, eight from North West, six from Mpumalanga, five from Limpopo, three from the Free State and one from the Northern Cape.

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