A senior Joburg advocate vying for a place on the Bench has been grilled over her relationship with controversial businessman Glenn Agliotti, who greeted her with a kiss in public while she was an acting judge.
Kiki Bailey, SC, was interviewed by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) at the Table Bay Hotel on Monday, during which Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe also asked why SA’s bar councils did not establish guidelines to ensure that black counsel were briefed more often.
Another candidate was probed about apartheid atrocities inspired by policies of the Afrikaner Broederbond, of which he was once a member.
These were some of the issues that emerged during on Monday’s proceedings when the commission interviewed candidates for the north and south Gauteng high courts.
Bailey was quizzed over her relationship with Agliotti, a convicted drug trafficker, who was last year cleared of the murder of Brett Kebble. She denied having any relationship with Agliotti, saying she was “not friends with Mr Agliotti whatsoever” and that the incident “threw” her.
She explained to the commission that Agliotti came up to her on her first day as an acting judge, while she was having lunch with Judge Lucy Mailula and then-acting judge Tanya Brenner.
At the time, Agliotti was sitting at a nearby table with a group of people, including his counsel.
“I can’t fathom it, how he came from behind and kissed me hello in front of the judges and under circumstances where we are not friends,” she said.
Agliotti was an accused in the Kebble murder at the time.
Bailey said she met Agliotti in the 1980s at a wedding, where he also met her family. She also knew his advocate, who practised on the same floor as her, very well. Agliotti was “constantly” on their floor. But, she said, she had not socialised with him.
Later in the day, Hlophe quizzed candidate Gerald Farber, SC, over what was stopping the advocates’ profession from establishing guidelines that paved the way for further transformation of the judiciary.
This could include a guideline where, for example, if a white junior advocate was briefed, he or she was obliged to brief a black silk.
Farber responded by saying that if the profession was “ coerced” into transformation, it would be counter-productive and be met with resistance. “Transformation is not a matter of coercion,” he said.
In what proved to be a gruelling day of interviews, candidate Johan Kruger, SC, was also grilled over his former Broederbond membership. Kruger said he joined the group for cultural reasons, because he grew up in a typical Afrikaans community. But, he denied being aware of policies by the group that gave rise to apartheid atrocities.
Commissioner Dumisa Ntsebeza, SC, probed Kruger over whether he knew of the apartheid-era “iron-fist crackdown” which had triggered waves of secret killings.
Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng asked him if he was aware of a plot by the Broederbond to infiltrate black universities with Afrikaner academics to ensure that only a limited number of black students passed certain fields of study, including law. - Pretoria News