Magistrate appointed after 12 years of exclusion from job due to race

17 August 2021

Solidarity today announced that after 12 years of being excluded for race reasons from a job Martin Kroukamp must be officially appointed as a senior magistrate in Alberton. This comes after years of litigation between Solidarity and the Department of Justice.

We welcome the Equality Court’s ruling and are delighted by it. The court unequivocally found that the actions of the then Minister of Justice, Jeff Radebe, amounted to unfair discrimination on the basis of race,” Anton van der Bijl, Solidarity’s head of legal matters explained. “It is a shame that for more than a decade Mr Kroukamp had to act in the position he had applied for simply because the department did not want to permanently appoint a while male”.

According to the ruling the Department of Justice must appoint Mr Kroukamp to the position with immediate effect. The department must also carry the costs of the case.

“In his ruling the judge warned that we can never establish a united and healthy society simply by applying the inequalities of apartheid in reverse. We fully concur with this,” Van der Bijl stated. “However, it is sad that we constantly have to drag the government to court for a judge to simply explain to it that this madness about race is unacceptable”.

Solidarity contends that Kroukamp’s case is paving the way for future litigation over appointments made by government departments.

“Although blatant such behaviour by the government is by no means rare. Therefore, we will continue to fight for hundreds of other Kroukamps until the government would finally turn away from its obsession with race above all else,” Van der Bijl concluded.

Issued by Anton van der Bijl, Head: Legal Matters, Solidarity, 17 August 2021