The Rule 34(1) tender, absent a cost tender, was made after close of business and without any response from the applicant’s attorneys and without notifying them, the respondent’s attorneys paid R1,900,000 into their trust account. The facts and legal argument lend itself to one conclusion, and that is, on receipt of the applicant’s settlement proposal, indicating that this would at that stage include a punitive cost tender, the respondent adopted to thwart costs by responding with a tender in terms of Rule 34(1) and then making payment of the tendered amount, without an acceptance of the tender by the applicant. These actions are not bona fide and an abuse of process.

The applicant is unsuccessful in his attempt to set aside a decision by Absa to refer his name for listing on the Register of Dishonest Employees System (REDS). The application was a challenge to the lawfulness of the exercise of Absa’s rights to REDS list the applicant emanating from their employment relationship. It was discovered that Mr Shundlana had copied large portions of Absa's proprietary code and technical information, including lists of users and login information, to his public GitHub repository, which was open to public viewing and access. According to Absa this was a major leak of highly confidential information, which could enable hackers to penetrate Absa's security far more easily. It was feared that the applicant planned to sell sensitive technical information. After being interviewed, the applicant failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for his conduct.

In an application for variation of a maintenance order, the court notes that the experts have all implored the parties to desist from their negative behaviour to one another which occurs in the presence of the children and which is a source of ongoing emotional damage and distress to the children, but they will not do so. The applicant reported a number of professionals involved in the divorce action to their respective governing bodies, and these include estate agents, a social worker, the children’s doctor and the parenting coordinator. The applicant has apparently also lodged complaints against the children’s respective schools. This is unfortunate and will only redound to the children’s detriment.

The applicant is a clearing agent, and on imported goods, SARS demanded payment of some R14 million of import duties and payment of some R20 million comprising of interest, penalties and forfeiture amounts. The review application fails and the court has observations on the costs. The applicant has, on numerous occasions in its papers, accused SARS and its officials of unlawful conduct. Scurrilous accusations were made of allegedly falsely targeting the applicant. These allegations are defamatory and were made without a factual basis. Irrespective of the applicant’s views of the correctness of the impugned decision, the subsequent unwarranted attack made on oath in court papers, merit a sanction as a measure of this court’s disapproval of such conduct by a litigant.

BP secured an order ejecting Boy 50 from the petrol station it operates, but Boy 50 seeks to appeal, and BP seeks to execute the order. The fuel at this station had been mixed with paraffin and has a dangerously low ignition temperature. The petrol station in these circumstances is a disaster waiting to happen. The petrol station, or any of the cars that fill up at it, are at real and continuing risk of exploding if the hazardous fuel ignites at the wrong time. The onus to show irreparable harm on a balance of probabilities has been discharged. BP does not have to wait until people are killed or injured, or their property is actually destroyed, to show irreparable harm. Having to put up with hazardous fuel – which might result in death or serious injury – being sold in their name or on their premises is harm enough. The interim execution application must accordingly succeed.

* Not reported in the alerts.

The purpose of private arbitration is to resolve disputes in an expeditious, informal and cost-effective manner, by way of a process agreed between the two opposing parties, without having to resort to all the rigours and formalities, as well as the systemic delays, normally associated with litigation in the courts. As such, resorting back to the court in the course of such a process should be kept to the minimum. The current matter, emanating from precisely such an agreed private arbitration, does not appear to achieve the above objectives. The parties appear to be unable to focus on simply getting the real dispute finally resolved, with the matter now, for the second time, returning to litigation in this court, with such litigation emanating from incessant technical point taking. This can never be what is intended with private arbitration.

The applicant disclosed that she had previously slept on the job and had been dismissed. She worked the night shift during the relevant period as she was studying for her LLB degree at the North West University. At the time of the incident she was six months pregnant and she avers that she was constantly requesting to be released from the night shift as she had to work 12 hours without a break. At university she was charged with plagiarism after she and other students swopped answers on an assignment. The court discusses whether she is fit and proper to be admitted and what the Legal Practice Council considered to be her dishonesty and lack of remorse. The court also discusses the psychological report.

This case involves a disciplinary hearing that ensued because of unauthorised removal of copper. Security personnel and three others were polygraphed and questioned specific to the copper removal. Polygraph test results on their own are merely an indication of deception and do not, without more, justify the fair dismissal of an employee. It is apparent that the commissioner failed to approach the issue of the hearsay evidence in the requisite manner, this, in the context where this evidence was presented to corroborate the polygraph test results. It is quite evident that the commissioner failed to comply with the invaluable guide set out by the Labour Appeal Court on hearsay evidence in Exxaro Coal v Chipana [2019] ZALAC 52.

While it is correct that this matter was ultimately a fairly straightforward mandament van spolie, to which the respondent appeared to have no defence, the applicant was justified in employing an experienced and streetwise counsel, given that the respondent had indicated that he was intending to raise a variety of defences and, for example, seek to invoke the protections afforded by the PIE Act and also attempt to cloud the issues by portraying them as interlinked with the pending divorce action. The indications were that the respondent would thus seek to complicate the issues as much as possible, as part of his strategy to improve his bargaining position for the divorce, and at least try to frustrate and delay by using the PIE Act, in circumstances where he knew that time was of the essence for the applicant, who had to give vacant occupation to a tenant.

“But the biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against that collective defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland.”

These words from the sniper pen of Ngugi wa Thiongo in his 1986 literary masterpiece “Decolonising the Mind”, ring incessantly in this court’s mind as it traverses the papers and arguments in this matter where yet another African man married a wife customarily and whilst that marriage subsisted sought to sidestep that marriage of his cultural wasteland by concluding another marriage, the so-called “civil” marriage, only to escape witnessing the acrimonious wrangling over the administration of his estate visited upon his “wives” by his cultural bomb victimhood in the wake of his intestate demise through death.