- The Legal Practice Council has condemned attacks on the judiciary.
- It has described the attacks as "unfortunate".
- The Pan African Bar Association of South Africa says it is also concerned about gratuitous attacks on judges.
The Legal Practice Council (LPC), which regulates the legal profession, has condemned "unwarranted criticism" of the judiciary, after the Constitutional Court sentenced former president Jacob Zuma to 15 months behind bars for contempt of court.
In a statement, the LPC said the attacks on the judiciary were "alarming" and "unfortunate", and added that the judicial system had legal mechanisms that could be used if a litigant was dissatisfied with a court's decision.
"We are all bound by the Constitution, and it is important that we must all engage with the judiciary in a civil manner and afford it the respect and autonomy it deserves," said LPC chairperson, Kathleen Matolo-Dlepu.
"As the regulatory body of the legal profession in South Africa, we appeal to everyone to exercise caution when criticising the judiciary without any substantive evidence," she added.
The Pan African Bar Association of South Africa (Pabasa) raised similar concerns of "gratuitous attacks on judges for judgments that their attackers do not like".
"Judges have a job to do, and they are required to do it to the best of their ability," Pabasa chairperson Nasreen Rajab-Budlender, SC, said in a statement.
"If their best ability should prove inadequate, the appeals and review process to higher courts is available as a corrective measure," she added.
"If there should be suspicion that a judge is acting in a manner that is inconsistent with his or her [office as a judge], the mechanism of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) is available. Increasingly, one hears the judiciary being described as captured" or "corrupt".
She said:
Rajab-Budlender added they were also concerned about "verbal attacks [on] and character assassination" of legal practitioners for representing certain individuals.
"Legal practitioners, particularly those who practise as advocates of the referral type, have a duty to provide access to justice to everyone who needs it – king of pauper, saint of villain. It is prejudicial to the fulfilment of that role when legal practitioners are equated with their clients or where assumptions are made about the nature of the advice they may have provided.
"Some of these character attacks on legal practitioners' border on the defamatory. Just as those who have grounds to complain about judges should use the formal channels to do so, anyone who considers that there is a basis to complain about a legal practitioner should use the formal channels established for that purpose."
Pabasa said people should follow appropriate channels for raising complaints.
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