(MBABANE 25 June 2012)\u00a0 The Swaziland government has renewed the contract of the country’s chief justice, who is a Lesotho national, saying there were no local judges suitable for the job, an official said on Monday.<\/p>\n
Michael Ramodibedi’s appointment comes despite a new constitution adopted in 2005 that says only Swazi nationals are eligible for the job from July 26, 2012.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Swazis were considered for the position of Chief Justice, but none of them merited appointment to the post,\u00a0\u00bb said Lorraine Hlophe, the secretary of the Judicial Service Commission (JSE).<\/p>\n
The constitution, adopted on July 26, 2005, says that \u00ab\u00a0a person who is not a citizen of Swaziland shall not be appointed as chief justice of a superior court after seven years from the commencement of this constitution\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
Ramodibedi first arrived in Swaziland in 2006 to take up the position of acting judge on the appeal court, and was appointed acting chief justice in 2010.<\/p>\n
During his tenure as the country’s most senior judge, Ramodibedi has issued an order that makes it impossible to sue King Mswati III, Africa’s last absolute monarch.<\/p>\n
Last year, Swazi lawyers staged a protest demanding he be sacked, after he fired judge Thomas Masuku, one of the few judges critical of Mswati.<\/p>\n
His contract is indefinite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(MBABANE 25 June 2012)\u00a0 The Swaziland government has renewed the contract of the country’s chief justice, who is a Lesotho national, saying there were no local judges suitable for the job, an official said on Monday. Michael Ramodibedi’s appointment comes despite a new constitution adopted in 2005 that says only Swazi nationals are eligible for […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classifiee","region-afrique-australe","region-afrique-du-sud-2","region-lesotho-fr","type-articles-de-presse","item-year-490","item-theme-discrimination-fr","item-theme-ethnique-raciale-religieuse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}