Cape Judge President John Hlophe on Thursday denied trying to influence two Constitutional Court judges in a judgment relating to Jacob Zuma before he became president.

"I never said 'in my view this is how the case must be decided'," Hlophe told the Judicial Service Commission's preliminary inquiry into the complaint, being held in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

After an eleventh-hour court application, the inquiry was opened to the public and the media, and Hlophe's version was heard publicly for the first time in a case that has dragged on for more than a year, and was recently ordered by a court to begin anew.

He also denied saying he was connected to the National Intelligence Agency and that he had a mandate to discuss the case with them.

"I never said that," said Hlophe, who asked to speak under oath, even though he was not obliged to. His evidence was being heard by a JSC sub-committee of Gauteng Judge President Bernard Ngoepe and advocates Marumo Moerane and Ishmael Semenya.

The complaint revolves around conversations he had last year with acting judge Chris Jafta, who had been seconded to the court from the Supreme Court of Appeal, and Judge Bess Nkabinde.

Hlophe has also lodged a counter-complaint against all the court's judges, who opted to lodge the complaint with the JSC. He accepted they had a right to make a complaint, but felt it was wrong that they made the matter public before "picking up the phone" to hear his side of the story.

'I was lynched'

"I was lynched and insulted because of their conduct."

He rejected their explanation that it was a bid to avoid it being leaked to the public.

He also said there had been moves to get him to accept a financial settlement to leave the judiciary, which upset him. Ngoepe mentioned a figure of R10-million, but the subject was not expanded on.

Chief Justice Pius Langa rejected a suggestion that there were ulterior motives in laying the complaint.

"I categorically deny the allegation of an ulterior motive."

He said once he became aware of the complaint, he had no other option, as chief justice, to forward it to the JSC for them to adjudicate it. If they had not attended to it and let the JSC decide on it, it would have caused immense damage to the judiciary if it had come out later.

Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke took umbrage at the suggestion there was a political motive, based on Hlophe's concern that the Democratic Alliance was the only political party to have received the statement the judges e-mailed to the media on the subject.

Hlophe had said earlier the party was always "after me" in the Western Cape, so that is why it raised his suspicions.

"I dare him to put that motive on the table in proper fact," said Moseneke in the dead quiet room, explaining that the e-mail list comprised people who had asked to be put on it.

Hlophe told the sub-committee that his discussions with the judges were of a "general nature" and though he did speak about the matter of privilege, it was general and in the context of it being a hot topic in the legal fraternity.

They had also spoken about many other matters, including about their families.

He only asked Nkabinde when judgment was going to be completed in the Zuma case because he spotted some files in the corner of her chambers, and there was a lot of interest in it.

"Every lawyer was talking about it — I asked, when are you going to give judgment?"

Nkabinde 'snapped'

Nkabinde said she "snapped" when the Zuma matter came up, because she had been "warned" by Jafta that Hlophe might raise the topic, and told him to stop talking about it.

Jafta said when his "old friend" Hlophe visited him at the Constitutional Court in March 2008, he didn't find the meeting itself unusual.

But he found him broaching the Zuma matter unusual because it was not customary to discuss pending cases.

Asked whether Hlophe knew about this practice, he said Hlophe had not sat on the Supreme Court of Appeal or the Constitutional Court before, "so he might not know about it".

"I would really not know what intention he had. One has to look at the facts of the discussion and draw an inference."

The commission will sit against on 18 August to discuss the transcript of the initial inquiry and decide what to do next.

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