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The Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg said it will uphold the decision to fire Kempton Park Chief Magistrate Judith van Schalkwyk, who was found guilty on 24 charges – including ‘rude and threatening behaviour’ and travelling to Washington on an attorney’s dime.

While the High Court found that some of the charges against her should be set aside, the remaining was serious enough to uphold her firing. Judging by some of the charges, Magistrate Judith van Schalkwyk should rather get a TV deal. Think Judge Judy meets Arrested Development.

Regarding her ‘conduct towards colleagues’, she apparently told someone that his decision “sucked”, wrote on a charge sheet about someone, “Have you finally lost your marbles”, and told another colleague: “If I could throw you through the wall…”.

Other highlights included a ‘rude, disrespectful email’ to Chief Magistrate Gert Jonker and, perhaps the least funny part, the R34 000 Washington jaunt – thanks to an attorney. A final insult however was the charge that she had not paid for parking at the court. That’s just being mean.

Van Schalkwyk was first suspended in 2013 and eventually removed from office in 2022. In her review application, she claimed that the decision to charge her was based on an “ulterior motive”, and that there was only one complaint before the commission before they began to “poke around”, even accessing her bank statements.

Judge Twala however said there was no basis for her complaints as the law allowed the commission to conduct ‘a broad investigation’ if it came across possible misconduct during its inquiries.

Groundup reports that her case was even cited in Parliament by the Commission of magistrates as an example of using “every trick in the book” to delay proceedings.

The commission had lawfully obtained her bank statements from her work computer, said Judge Twala. They were relevant to the charges and the commission was justified in obtaining them. Van Schalkwyk shot back that while she had been convicted of 13 counts of misconduct, the commission had now conceded that nine should be set aside, which meant that the whole sanction should be reviewed.

Judge Twala however dropped the gavel on the maths by saying the seriousness of the remaining charges “warrant the removal of the applicant from the magistracy”.

“The misconduct for which the applicant was convicted is sufficiently serious to have the potential to undermine the administration of justice and the rule of law. The inescapable conclusion, therefore, is that the sanction to remove the applicant from the magistracy is justified under the circumstances.”

Fair enough. Case dismissed and Van Schalkwyk has to pay the application costs. The South African justice system is no place for a rogue magistrate, we have reality TV for that.

[source:groundup]