{"id":19729,"date":"2013-05-10T13:20:09","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T11:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/state-hires-only-white-advocates\/"},"modified":"2013-05-10T13:20:09","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T11:20:09","slug":"state-hires-only-white-advocates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/state-hires-only-white-advocates\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018State hires only white advocates\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        \t                                <!-- Main Editorial Image --><br \/>\n                    \t\t\t      \t\t\t                                      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/plugins\/rss-poster\/cache\/1f8b0_2437145520.jpg\" alt=\"black lawyers\" title=\"\" class=\"pics\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"captions_credit_article\">INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS<\/p>\n<p class=\"captions\">Advocate and Judicial Services Commission spokesman Dumisa Ntsebeza. Picture: Dumisani Sibeko<\/p>\n<p class=\"captions\">\n<p class=\"related_articles\">Related Stories<\/p>\n<ul class=\"menu_tab_lists_related\">\n<li><a class=\"related_articles\" href=\"http:\/\/www.iol.co.za:80\/news\/politics\/few-black-women-work-as-senior-counsel-1.1503879\">Few black women work as senior counsel<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--PSTYLE=WT Web Text--><\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Durban &#8211; Advocate and Judicial Service Commission (JSC) spokesman Dumisa Ntsebeza launched a scathing attack on the government for its failure to employ the services of black advocates, saying this was driving some out of the profession. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Ntsebeza said that from now on there should be a policy stating that no white advocate should be briefed by the government if they did not have a junior assisting them who was either black, Indian or coloured. He said the government used the services of mainly white law firms and advocates like David Unterhalter SC and Jeremy Gauntlett SC, who were made out to be \u201csuperhuman\u201d. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Gauntlett was recently ignored again by the JSC when he was a candidate for a position in the Constitutional Court. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Ntsebeza said on Thursday that there were many female and black advocates who had left the profession because of a lack of briefs from the state, which was the biggest consumer of legal services in the country. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Ntsebeza was commenting on a written parliamentary reply from Justice Minister Jeff Radebe, who said his department was well on its way to \u201cfast-tracking\u201d the appointment of black and female justices to the Bench, and that 32 women had already been selected. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Radebe\u2019s remarks followed damning reports that, as of October last year, only 28 percent of judicial officers nationally, were women. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Radebe was responding to Cope MP Nick Koornhof on whether his department had put in place a programme since 1994 to fast-track the advancement of black justices in the judiciary without causing \u201cfriction\u201d with other race and gender groups. \u201cI wish to inform (Koornhof) that, yes, the programme aimed at accelerating the appointment of women judges, has been developed to advance the transformation of the judiciary. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">\u201cMy predecessor, Mrs Brigitte Mabandla, initiated and sponsored a programme to fast-track the appointment of women judges which was implemented by former Chief Justice Pius Langa and heads of courts,\u201d said Radebe. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">He said that some of the 32 women who had followed this programme were subsequently appointed to the Bench. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Ntsebeza said he wasn\u2019t aware of Radebe\u2019s figures. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">He said the remedy did not lie \u201cin artificial attempts like taking women all over the place and putting them in a judicial school of training or whatever\u201d, but in offering them work. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Many female advocates left the profession \u201cbecause they don\u2019t get work, and if you do not get work, you cannot pay Bar dues, you cannot rent chambers and therefore you cannot be kept on the Bar\u201d. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Ntsebeza said that government departments, provincial governments, parastatals and municipalities were the largest consumers of legal services. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">\u201cNow look at just one case, the e-toll case, how many black practitioners were there? In the North Gauteng High Court when the e-toll thing was there, who were briefed?\u201d he asked. Government departments were consistently sidelining black senior counsels, he said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">On Gauntlett and Unterhalter, who represented the government in the e-tolls case, Ntsebeza said: \u201cThese guys have been made to appear to be superhuman.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">\u201cIt\u2019s going to be our policy, starting from now, that no white is going to be briefed if he or she does not have a junior who is African, Indian or coloured,\u201d said Ntsebeza. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Radebe said there was a programme regarding the allocation of 65 percent of state legal briefs to \u201cpreviously disadvantaged legal practitioners\u201d, in line with a constitutional imperative in Section 174(2), which called for the need for the judiciary to reflect the racial and gender composition of the country. \u201cI am not aware of any racial or gender-based frictions that arise from the mere compliance with this constitutional injunction,\u201d said Radebe. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">Responding to Ntsebeza\u2019s claims on Thursday, Gauntlett said the basis for Ntsebeza\u2019s unhappiness was the fact that he hadn\u2019t received any commercial or government briefs in years. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\">\u201cIt\u2019s not the first time Mr Ntsebeza has made this complaint. It\u2019s rather unfortunate that he wants to deal with his personal difficulties in this way,\u201d said Gauntlett. <\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\"><strong>Political Bureau<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS Advocate and Judicial Services Commission spokesman Dumisa Ntsebeza. Picture: Dumisani Sibeko Related Stories Few black women work as senior counsel Durban &#8211; Advocate and Judicial Service Commission (JSC) spokesman Dumisa Ntsebeza launched a scathing attack on the government for its failure to employ the services of black advocates, saying this was driving some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-19729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}