South Africa: John Hlophe’s appointment to the JSC ‘threatens the public’s confidence in judiciary’

“In my years on the Bench and thereafter as a member of Freedom Under Law and now the chairman of its Board, I and many others have sought to arrest the decline of the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), by raising our voices. That it has increasingly abused its power and became captured by political interests has been laid bare. It was not only the politicians on the JSC who were responsible for this. Some judges have acquiesced in this development. 

“Senior lawyers with vested…