Isaac Madondo

Not long after his appointment, Madondo applied for a leadership position in the KZN Division of the High Court.

Isaac Madondo stirred controversy when he went up against former KZN Judge President Chiman Patel for that position in 2011. Prior to that round of interviews, an unsigned letter from the Pietermaritzburg branch of the Black Lawyers Association accusing Patel of being an “anti-Black African” racist was sent to the Judicial Service Commission. The commission ignored the letter, and its spokesperson, Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza SC described it as an “aberration”.

When asked by then-commissioner Koos van der Merwe whether the time was not ripe to appoint an “Indian” as judge president, Madondo responded: “I don’t think so. We still have things to address – imbalances, all kinds of things, which need more insight, which a person who is not [a black] African cannot be privy to.”

Race again dominated Madondo’s unsuccessful October 2015 interview for the position of Deputy Judge President – as did questions about whether the commission should consider appointing a much younger person to a leadership position on the Bench.

Madondo would interview four more times until he successful became Deputy Judge President of KZN in 2016.

After the retirement of respected Judge President Achmat Jappie in 2021, Madondo applied for the top job.^[1]

Rulings

Some of Madondo’s more high-profile cases have included Constitutional issues.

In 2021, Madondo gave the landmark judgment in CASAC v Ingonyama Trust where the Zulu King’s Ingonyama Trust was declared to have acted unlawfully and in violation of the Constitution by giving resident leases to the king’s subjects whom he was holding the land in trust, forcing them to be perpetual tenants to their own land. Isaac Madondo ordered that these leases be cancelled, and the land reform minister put measures in place to regularize people’s occupation of the land.

In another dispute involving the Zulu Royal Family, Madondo presided over the tussle over the meaning of the will of the late King Goodwill Zwelithini, and his nomination of a successor. One queen and two princesses took the other queens and princes to court.

In 2013 Uruguayan business Gaston Savoi – who was facing corruption, racketeering and fraud charges related to alleged dodgy procurement deals with the KwaZulu-Natal Health Department — asked the high court to declare the definitions of “pattern of racketeering activity” and “enterprise” in the Prevention of Organised Crime Act (POCA) unconstitutional and invalid, on the grounds of vagueness and over-breadth.

Isaac Madondo rejected the constitutional challenge, save for findings of unconstitutionality in respect of certain provisions to the extent of the inclusion of the words: “ought reasonably to have known”, which were declared unconstitutional and invalid to that extent. The Constitutional Court rejected Savoi’s appeal and declined to uphold the High Court’s findings of invalidity.^[1]

Books

• Msinga: History and its Political Landscape [1820-2013] (2017)

• The role of traditional courts in the justice system: Acting within the provisions of the Constitution (2017)

• Revelation of God's Truth and Plan: God is above all earthly rulers, and His law is above all human laws (2020)^[2][3]

References