Constitutional Court to rule on Khampepe’s recusal bid

The Constitutional Court will hand down judgment in the matter of former presidents Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki to have Justice Sisi Khampepe recused as the Chairperson of the TRC Cases Inquiry.

The two former presidents took the matter on review to the apex court after Khampepe refused to stand down from the role, after they asserted that she would likely be biased due to her prior roles as a TRC Commissioner and Deputy National Director of Public Prosecutions.

The matter was argued before the courts earlier this year, with Mbeki’s legal counsel, Advocate Ngwako Maenetje, submitting that Justice Khampepe’s past involvement in issues linked to the inquiry raises concerns “When you are now the chair sitting, there are victims before you, families of victims, that you, in respect of whom you said the perpetrators must be prosecuted, and you were in the NPA to prosecute them, and you simultaneously, you refuse amnesty and former President Zuma,” “Somehow it is unreasonable, wholly unreasonable, that applying a normative value of an ordinary person in the streets, looking up on this, would find that this is, I have an apprehension,” adds Maenetje.

TRC Cases | Khampepe recusal application denied