Gauteng Judge President Dunstan Mlambo says he is ‘not unhappy’ about the Legal Practice Council (LPC) investigating Advocate Dali Mpofu SC over his false sexual harassment claims against him, reports News24.

Mlambo also denied the advocate’s claims that the inquiry could ‘discredit’ him.

Mpofu claimed in an interview with the SABC that the LPC’s decision to pursue professional misconduct charges against him over his treatment of Mlambo and Chief Justice Mandisa Maya in their Chief Justice interviews comes ‘from somebody who also seeks to discredit those esteemed members of our judiciary’.

‘What do they expect me to do, to call them as witnesses and put them up in the public, or is the LPC going to call them up in public?’ he asked.

However, Mlambo told News24 it was not clear to him why the LPC’s exercise of its oversight function in respect of Mpofu’s alleged misconduct would discredit him or anyone else named in the charges.

He added: ‘I’m not unhappy that they are pursuing this process.’

After pointing out that the LPC had itself stressed that it ‘generally does not require judges, due to their position as judicial officers, to testify in disciplinary proceedings’, Mlambo stressed that Mpofu’s controversial questioning of him at the JSC interviews had been recorded – and therefore there was no need for him to testify. 

That stance is shared by Qubudile Dyantyi, the chairperson of the Section 194 committee that ultimately found Mpofu’s client – then-Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane – unfit to hold office.

Mlambo said he supported an investigation that would allow Mpofu to explain why – while there was no formal sexual harassment accusation levelled against him – the then-JSC member nonetheless persisted in questioning him about a ‘rumour’ that he had sexually harassed two female judges.

According to News24, it later emerged that Mlambo had, in fact, tried to assist two female judges when they reported being harassed by another male colleague and had asked retired Constitutional Court Justice Bess Nkabinde to help them.

While the JSC struck Mpofu’s sexual harassment questions from the record of Mlambo’s Chief Justice interview, the Judge President told the JSC he felt ‘pained’ that the rumour had found its way into that process.

While Mlambo, one of three candidates selected by President Cyril Ramaphosa to serve as Deputy Chief Justice, said he was not opposed to Mpofu being investigated over his conduct towards him at the Chief Justice interviews, Chief Justice Mandisa Maya took a radically different position.

She told TimesLIVE she found it ‘utterly disrespectful and patronising’ that the LPC had pursued a professional misconduct charge against Mpofu over his alleged sexual innuendo towards her without informing her – and slammed the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution for complaining about his conduct without her buy-in.

Full News24 report