AfriForum’s legal bid to remove Hlophe from JSC an abuse of process - MK Party
The MK Party has labelled AfriForum’s legal bid to remove impeached Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe from the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) as an abuse of process.
MK Party parliamentary leader, John Hlophe, in Parliament. Picture: @ParliamentofRSA/X
JOHANNESBURG - The MK Party has labeled AfriForum’s legal bid to remove impeached Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe from the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) as an abuse of process.
Following his removal from office earlier this year, Hlophe was appointed as an MK MP and has since been deployed to the JSC in this capacity.
The move has garnered widespread controversy and is now being challenged by various civil society groups, including AfriForum, which has approached the apex court with an urgent, direct access application.
The MK Party’s attorney, Thabo Kwinana, said in their papers that AfriForum had "jumped the queue".
He said that before taking aim at Hlophe’s deployment to the JSC, the lobby group would have to challenge his appointment as an MP, among other things.
Against this backdrop, he argued that the application was an "egregious abuse of the court process" and that it should fail "on the grounds of prematurity or ripeness".
He maintained that the purpose of the application was "harassment" and "the pursuit of political motives", was adamant the National Assembly's decision to designate Hlophe was "perfectly rational in every legal sense of the word" and said that to interfere with it would constitute "a textbook case of judicial overreach".