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4 weeks ago
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A tribunal has found that Judge Mushtak Parker has rendered himself guilty of gross misconduct and acted dishonestly.
- A tribunal has found Western Cape judge Mushtak Parker guilty of gross misconduct.
- Despite deposing to an affidavit about an alleged assault by former Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe, Parker later claimed he may have misremembered the altercation.
- Parker was also found to have failed to declare his law firm’s trust fund misappropriation when he applied to be a judge.
A tribunal has found that Judge Mushtak Parker rendered himself guilty of gross misconduct and acted dishonestly by giving two contradictory versions about allegations that former Western Cape judge president John Hlophe assaulted him.
Hlophe’s then deputy, Patricia Goliath, accused Hlophe of verbally abusing her and assaulting Parker in February 2019.
The tribunal found that Parker had “acted dishonestly in giving two contradictory and mutually exclusive versions about the incident” between him and Hlophe.
“By giving these two contradictory and mutually exclusive versions, the respondent rendered himself guilty of gross misconduct,” the Tribunal found.
Goliath raised Parker’s alleged assault in a gross misconduct complaint against the then-judge president in January 2020. According to Goliath, the alleged assault occurred months before the then-judge president had allegedly verbally abused her.
READ | Judge Parker’s big gamble: Will his silence about Hlophe ‘assault’ save him from removal?
She said Parker claimed that Hlophe had violently pushed against his upper body in an attack that caused him to fall to the ground and injure his back. Parker had dictated and deposed to a sworn affidavit about the alleged assault immediately after it happened and subsequently told at least eight judges about the altercation in the months that followed.
But, following Goliath’s complaint, he backtracked and sought to retract on his accusations, saying he may have “misremembered” the incident.
During the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) tribunal, tribunal chairperson retired Judge President Bernard Ngoepe said that there was “real and objective evidence” linked to the alleged assault incident, including a picture of a key allegedly broken during the altercation. This opened Parker up to speculation that he was lending support to Hlophe’s “false denial” to the JSC about that assault.
The tribunal found:
The undisputed evidence is that the respondent gave two contrary versions in respect to an incident that happened in his chambers between him and Judge Hlophe.
“Regardless of which version is true, one of them had to be a lie, and that is also incompatible and unbecoming [of] the holding of judicial office.”
The tribunal also found that Parker and his partners “misappropriated funds of their trust creditors while he practised as an attorney” and acted in breach of the law society’s rules by not disclosing a trust deficit in the trust account of his law firm.
“His failure to disclose in his nomination questionnaire and in the interview before the JSC that the trust account of his law firm had had a deficit for a long time while he was the managing director, constitutes gross misconduct on his part,” the tribunal found.
READ | ‘He was traumatised’: Judges tell JSC how Parker repeatedly claimed Hlophe had attacked him
“Individually and cumulatively, the above two findings, each constituting gross misconduct on the part of the respondent as they do, bring the Judiciary into disrepute.”
Parker became the first judge in South African legal history to respond with silence to the serious misconduct complaints against him during the tribunal.
