This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.
GroundUp reports that Johannesburg Labour Court Acting Judge Smanga Sethene set aside the sanction imposed on a National Lotteries Commission (NLC) employee by a disciplinary hearing chairperson, who suspended Boitumelo Rachel Mafonjo’s dismissal for ten years on condition that she did not re-offend during that time.
In a recent ruling, the judge said: “For the chairperson to have expected the applicant (NLC) to keep Ms Mafonjo in its employ with the tag of gross dishonesty on her forehead for ten years assails rationality and legality in every respect.” The NLC sought to review the “incongruent” sanction handed down by Advocate Hor Modisa in December 2019. Judge Sethene said that had elementary legal research been conducted, it would have dawned on the chairperson that it was trite law that any misconduct peppered with gross dishonesty ought to have “elbowed out” Mafonjo and that a “suspended dismissal was foreign in labour law”. Mafonjo was first employed by the NLC in 2003 as a cleaner. At the time that she was charged with misconduct in 2018, she held the position of client liaison officer in Mahikeng. At the hearing, she was found guilty of gross dishonesty for extracting “confidential beneficiary” information from the system and giving it to a third party. She was also found guilty of not reporting unlawful activities aimed at defrauding the NLC and its beneficiaries, and of not declaring her own financial interests to the NLC. The NLC, in argument before Judge Sethene, said the sanction was irrational, given the severity of Mafonjo’s misconduct and that she had shown no remorse, claiming to have acted under duress. Judge Sethene ruled that Mafonjo be dismissed with immediate effect.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tania Broughton at GroundUp
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page