17 judges - and still no end to advocates' squabble over tea and sundries

It’s a bar fight with a difference.

A quibble over the cost of tea and sundries for Group 10, a group of Cape Town advocates, prompted advocate Fairuz Seria to leave the group, raising the spectre of a lack of transformation on her way out.

The wrangle was heading for the high court in Cape Town when Seria was scheduled to butt heads with the Cape Bar, which represents advocates, on Monday.

Seria wants to clear her name and highlight the bar’s alleged lack of transformation in the wrangle. The council earlier found Seria, who has acted as a magistrate, guilty of unprofessional conduct for not paying her floor dues and suspended her for six months.

“The relief requested in my court paper is simple: reverse the decision you took. It was wrong and unprocedural,” Seria says.

Seria said her woes started after she queried an increase in floor dues - used to pay for beverages, services and staff salaries, among other things – from R2,500 to R3,000 a month, by members of Group 10 in 2015. She said she could not afford the increase and voted against it, resigning from the group in January 2016. But she kept her chambers on the same floor as Group 10, near the courts.

Six months after she resigned, Group 10 complained to the Bar Council that her conduct was unbecoming of an advocate, saying she had failed to pay her floor dues since December 2015.

“Without telling me, Group 10 cut my services,” said Seria. “I have been sitting there without a landline, I have no choice but to walk around with my mobile internet. I had to borrow money to buy myself a coffee machine.”

Her predicament flies in the face the Cape Bar’s transformation goals, says Seria.

“Many black advocates have left the bar,” she said. “I want to put the truth out there. If a black person has to pay a certain amount of dues but he is not being briefed by white firms, how does he at the end of the day continue with his practice?"

Seria challenged her suspension in the high court, but it ruled that she should exhaust all internal remedies before approaching the courts.

She challenged the court's decision all the way to the Constitutional Court, but that court upheld the high court’s ruling. This week, Seria said she had returned to the high court because the Cape Bar had refused to deal with the matter.

“The bar made a decision that I am guilty — not of conduct unbecoming but of unprofessional conduct, something completely different. Six months is already gone but this is still on my record. They must expunge it because it impedes on my rights - if I want to sit on the bench, I can’t.”

Cape Bar Council chairman Andrew Breitenbach SC said the bar was defending the lawsuit. 

Breitenbach said the bar’s constitution stated that members who do not pay their dues are expelled. He denied that the litigation was a result of the bar having fallen short of its transformation goals.

“On the contrary, the failure of one member to pay floor dues may result in other historically disadvantaged junior members needing to absorb those costs and/or the staff, who are mainly women of colour, not being paid their salaries,” he said.

He said the bar was confronted by the legacy of apartheid, which was evident in the briefing patterns.

“Many attorneys remain unwilling or resistant to brief black and female advocates, thereby inhibiting their chances of establishing and sustaining successful legal practices,” he said.

Breitenbach said white males who had joined the Cape bar between 2017 and 14 November 2019 made up only 7.58%, while the figure for black women joining was 42.9% in the same period.

The matter was set down for Monday but, Seria said, it became apparent only on Wednesday “that one of the two judges seized with the partly heard matter” was not available until December 2.

The parties are awaiting a new date for the matter to be heard.

“I simply believe justice delayed is justice denied,” Seria said. “In total, my matter has to date been allocated to and removed from seven judges of the Cape high court. If I include the SCA and Constitutional Court judges, my matter has come before at least 17 judges. Yet it is nowhere near finality.

"I will not be silenced, nor will I be deterred. This matter will not be rubbished nor disappear,” Seria said.