A Pretoria High Court judge has at the last minute withdrawn his bid for a seat on the Constitutional Court, saying he thinks a woman should rather get the job.
However Judge Essop Patel's decision also follows a series of letters to the Judicial Services Commission from an unsuccessful litigant who claims Patel is unfit for the job.
Patel was to have been one of six candidates to be interviewed by the Judicial Services Commission in Cape Town on Monday morning for the vacancy occasioned by the retirement of chief justice Arthur Chaskalson.
JSC secretary Inez Greenstein said she received a fax on Friday night in which Patel said he was withdrawing and that "in the interests of transformation he felt the court needed a woman judge".
The remaining candidates are all women.
Over the past three months the JSC has received a number of letters objecting to Patel's nomination from diamond entrepreneur Joe van Zyl.
In July this year, more than 18 months after hearing the case, Patel ruled against an bid by Van Zyl to force the South African government to intervene over diamond mining rights alienated without compensation by the Lesotho government to make way for the Lesotho Highlands water project.
The claim is worth some R6,5-billion.
In his letters, Van Zyl claimed Patel's findings were copied "almost word for word" from the government legal team's written heads of argument, and sections of the judgement were "unfathomable on a plain reading".
"Judicial independence requires a judge to make up his own mind on a matter before him," Van Zyl said.
He asked that the commission reject Patel's bid for the Constitutional Court seat, and that it investigate the allegations in his letter.
In a letter to the JSC responding to Van Zyl's claims, Patel said he refuted all the allegations relating to his conduct over the court case, adding that they were "predicated on misconceived perception on the part of the objectors".
He said it would not be "prudent" to respond to Van Zyl's criticisms of the process by which his decision was arrived at or the quality of the judgement itself, because Van Zyl had already filed an application for leave to appeal.
"The proceedings were conducted fairly and I showed due courtesy to both sides," Patel said. "The judgement is a product of my industry. However, if I have erred then that is a matter for scrutiny on appeal by a superior court."
He said it was important for the administration of justice and the stability of constitutional democracy that "the fabric of judicial wall
should be protected from the gratuitous attacks of unsuccessful or irate litigants whose only grievance is that they have lost their cause".
Van Zyl, who attended Monday's hearings, told Sapa he was "very pleased" Patel would not be going to the Constitutional Court.
Patel could not be reached for comment.
The women interviewed on Monday were University of the Witwatersrand law academics Cathy Albertyn, Glenda Fick and Cora Hoexter, acting Supreme Court of Appeal judge Baaitse Nkabinde, and South African-born New York academic Penelope Andrews.
Some members of the JSC said during breaks that it seemed likely that Nkabinde, who is a member of the judiciary's committee investigating racism and sexism within its ranks, would get the nod from the commission. - Sapa