Miscellaneous | The Commercial Catering Case

The issue in this matter was of when Judges should recuse themselves for creating a reasonable apprehension (fear) of bias. In a case dealing with industrial action, workers had objected to appearing before a judge who had already made important findings of fact adverse to them in another matter. The majority of the Constitutional Court held that on the facts of the case a reasonable person would not have had a reasonable apprehension that the judge would be biased. In a joint dissent, Justices Mokgoro and Sachs said that applying the test of a reasonable person in the situation of a factory worker not learned in the law, the judge should have recused himself on the basis of a reasonable apprehension of bias. The video goes on to discuss the question of how the Justices of the Court had dealt with the challenge in the SARFU v President Mandela Case that several of them should recuse themselves because of a perception that they were biased in favour of President Mandela.