Hlophe lawyer happy to defend the indefensible

Cape Town Judge President John Hlophe has brought in the big guns to save his job on the bench.

Courtenay Griffiths QC, probably one of the world's most expensive legal minds, will be a stranger among the usual suspects when he leads Hlophe's defence at a tribunal in Kempton Park, east of Johannesburg, tomorrow.

Smooth-talking yet tight-lipped about his legal fees, Griffiths said: ''I'm paid what I'm worth."

He defends some of the world's ''indefensible" characters - among them gangsters, terrorists and even a notorious African warlord.

Hlophe will be the first judicial officer to face a tribunal on charges of misconduct under the amended Judicial Service Commission act. The case against him stems from a 2008 complaint when judges of the Constitutional Court referred Hlophe to the JSC after allegations that he had attempted to influence a pending judgment involving then-deputy president Jacob Zuma in his corruption case with French arms company Thint. Hlophe was alleged to have approached judges Bess Nkabinde and Chris Jafta in their chambers.

The tribunal comes after a lengthy court battle between the JSC and the Freedom Under Law advocacy group, which won a court order to establish the hearing.

Griffiths, a Jamaica-born lawyer, was approached by Hlophe and his legal team because he would bring ''independence and detachment from the courts of South Africa".

The son of a carpenter and immigrant parents who moved to the UK for work, Griffiths has been regarded as a savvy cross-examiner who gained fame during the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor.

Taylor was accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Sierra Leone civil war between 1991 and 2002. He was tried at the International Criminal Court in the Hague between 2009 and April last year. On Thursday, Taylor lost an appeal against his 50-year prison sentence.

During a memorable cross-examination of a witness in the Taylor trial, Griffiths unexpectedly quoted lyrics from a rap song by Grandmaster Flash, which had him briefly labelled the "rapping lawyer".

The former Rastafarian - he even grew shoulder-length hair - left Coventry, where he grew up, to study law at the London School of Economics.

Griffiths said his impoverished upbringing developed his court-room confidence. ''My court-room style has developed through a number of influences, especially from the church. I came across uneducated black pastors who could none the less rouse a congregation and these were self-taught individuals who had this instinctive ability to articulate their feelings to a congregation ... You can learn things from that," he said.

He is known for taking on unpopular clients, including Irish Republican Army terrorist Patrick Magee, who was convicted of planting the 1984 Brighton bomb targeting Margaret Thatcher, and 21 prisoners who took over a wing of the prison during the 1989 Risley riots in the UK and spent three days on the roof. The men stood trial on charges of riot and criminal damage but were acquitted.

''It is in those cases that the justice of a society is actually put to the test," said Griffiths. "That's why I take unpopular cases."

The father of four said he would happily take on as clients Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and even South Africa's former ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema, both of whom were entitled to the best defence possible.

''I would love to defend brother Bob. Who forms opinions about what's bad and good and what's right and wrong all around the world? It's the global media. They vilify him because he had the cheek to take land away from white people. How dare a black man do that?

"I would love to defend him because it would expose the hypocrisy of the British and US government, who were happy to support dictators in South America and elsewhere."

Griffiths's expertise ranges from crime to human rights and international law. He has been praised for his brilliant closing speeches.

He said he had kept a close eye on some of South Arica's high-profile legal cases.

''I think South Africans owe themselves a major pat on the back for the way they're willing to go after people at the highest level of the state suspected of committing criminal acts," he said.

Hlophe's legal team also includes Johannesburg lawyer Barnabas Xulu and Cape Town advocates Thabani Masuku and Thembalihle Sidaki.

Neither Nkabinde nor Jafta will attend the hearing until they are requested to give evidence. The technical point of whether they can indeed be called as witnesses will be argued when the tribunal starts in Johannesburg tomorrow.

laganparsadm@sundaytimes.co.za