Johannesburg – Today, day two in the search for South Africa’s next chief justice, Supreme Court of Appeal President Mandisa Maya will take the hot seat.
Maya cuts a striking figure in the line-up of candidates for the top job as she is the only woman to have been shortlisted.
The tone was set on Tuesday during Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga's interview when he was directly asked his thoughts on whether South Africa was ready for a woman chief justice.
Some panellists cast serious doubt on Madlanga's stance on gender transformation after he evaded the question on more than one occasion.
After almost 8 hours of rigorous questioning during his interview, Madlanga's earlier pro feminist views came into question when he all but laughed off the question of whether the country was ready for a female chief justice.
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He gave a diplomatic answer but asked the commissioners to judge for themselves.
“She (Maya) is a worthy colleague, she is a worthy lawyer and now she is a leader at a significant level in the judiciary. I would be dishonest to this august body if I were to ever try to take anything away from what I’ve just tried to highlight about her.
“That said, I would want to say let me leave the final decision on that issue with this august body but clearly and categorically making the acknowledgement that I have made and that I do not at all make grudgingly about my colleague,” Madlanga added.
While he conceded that there was room for a woman in the top job, panellist Julius Malema questioned whether Madlanga's response indicated that his earlier views on gender transformation were merely an act.
Maya, who will begin her interview at 9am at the Capital On the Park hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg, carries the burden of expectations as the woman in the running.
Questions around a female chief justice have set the tone for the coming interviews.
It is expected that Maya, who has made a number of prominent judgments in her time at the Supreme Court of Appeal, would be questioned around some of these.
Most recent is her dismissal of Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane's request to review the decision to dismiss her Sars Investigative Unit report.
In handing down judgment yesterday, Maya found there were no special circumstances to reconsider the judgment.
The public protector's report on the so-called Sars “rogue unit” was slammed by the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria in December 2020. The report implicated former Sars commissioner Pravin Gordhan in the unit.