Reporting position reviewed on 3 November 2026
A comparison of three Chief Justice’s reports leaves 63 entries from the late-2025 overdue list without an established delivery date. A further entry has a future-dated delivery annotation. Forty-one reappear in the latest report without delivery recorded. The records cannot establish how many remain outstanding on 3 November 2026.
A civil case in Durban had been waiting 1,025 days for judgment when the High Court’s second term began on 13 April 2026. The Chief Justice’s reserved-judgment report lists Acting Judge Mlungisi Sabela against the matter. Its delivery column contains a dash.
The case, Krishna Archary v Mutual Insurance Company & Others, D10559/2017, was reserved on 23 June 2023. It is the oldest entry without a recorded delivery date in the report’s national list of judgments reserved for more than six months.
That finding comes with a necessary qualification: a dash establishes what the report records. It does not establish that judgment remains undelivered today.
The document combines a snapshot from the beginning of Term 2 with delivery dates added afterwards. Treating every entry as an unresolved judgment would misrepresent both the judges and the litigants’ position.
The distinction is stark in the Durban Labour Court. Acting Judge Sandile Kuboni’s judgment in Shoprite Checkers (Pty) Ltd v T M Ngcobo & Others, D1361/2018, was reserved on 29 June 2021. At the April cutoff it was 1,749 days old, the longest wait anywhere in the report. But the delivery column records 12 May 2026. The full recorded interval was 1,778 days. That is a prolonged historical delay, not a judgment this document permits us to describe as still outstanding.
The disciplinary ruling concerning former acting judge Mlungisi Sabela
Sabela’s delays had previously reached the Judicial Conduct Committee. In Poyo-Dlwati JP v Sabela AJ, JSC/1112/23, decided on 10 July 2024, Judge President Poyo-Dlwati complained of five judgments outstanding beyond six months despite reminders and undertakings.
Sabela told the committee at its October 2023 hearing that illness had prevented delivery, but that he had recovered and could complete the judgments. The committee found that the complaint did not meet the prima facie threshold for recommending a tribunal to investigate removal grounds. It also held that the removal process could not serve its purpose because his acting appointment had expired and he no longer held judicial office.
The outcome was a decision against recommending a tribunal, not a finding that the judgments had been delivered. The ruling concerns a 2022 acting appointment and does not identify Archary. It cannot be assumed to determine that case’s subsequent delay or explain its position in the 2026 report.
Ten judges associated with the oldest entries without recorded delivery
Ranked by each individual judge’s oldest listed judgment with no delivery date, measured to 13 April 2026. These are elapsed calendar days since reservation, not days beyond a judicial deadline. Names and titles follow the report; AJ denotes acting judge.
| Rank | Judge | Court of oldest entry | Case | Reserved | Days | Source page |
| 1 | Sabela AJ | Durban High Court | D10559/2017 | 23 June 2023 | 1,025 | 22 |
| 2 | Singh AJ | Cape Town Labour Court | C791/2018 | 30 June 2023 | 1,018 | 29 |
| 3 | Ntshebe AJ | Johannesburg Labour Court | JR2721/17 | 6 July 2023 | 1,012 | 34 |
| 4 | Coetzee AJ | Cape Town Labour Court | C65/2021 | 13 September 2023 | 943 | 29 |
| 5 | Mokose AJ | Durban Labour Court | D57/2020 | 7 February 2024 | 796 | 31 |
| 6 | Malusi J | Makhanda High Court | EL1712/2022 | 30 May 2024 | 683 | 9 |
| 7 | Mchunu AJ | Pietermaritzburg High Court | 8806/2024P and 9016/2024P | 12 June 2024 | 670 | 20 |
| 8 | Timothy AJ | Cape Town Labour Court | C253/2023 and C275/2021 | 25 June 2024 | 657 | 29 |
| 9 | A Pillay AJ | Durban Labour Court | D1565/2018 | 9 July 2024 | 643 | 31 |
| 10 | Thobane AJ | Pretoria High Court | A242/23 | 30 July 2024 | 622 | 13 |
Singh AJ’s entry concerns Laserpac (Pty) Ltd v Cedric Peterson. Acting Judge Thabang Ntshebe concerns Victor Khanye Local Municipality v RF Du Toit. Both had passed 1,000 days at the reporting cutoff.
Coetzee AJ’s position illustrates why the delivery column matters. Two Cape Town Labour Court matters reserved in June 2023 are recorded as delivered on 12 August 2026. The later-reserved Lucy Gqozo v Denny Mushrooms still carries a dash. The judge therefore ranks fourth on the oldest entry without recorded delivery, rather than on the older, subsequently delivered cases.
The same distinction applies to Judge Malusi. Two Makhanda matters were reserved on 30 May 2024. Business Connexion (Pty) Ltd v BCMM is recorded as delivered on 4 August 2026. Designer Lightning v BCMM, using the report’s spelling, has no delivery date.
Mchunu AJ has two judgments reserved on the same day involving challenges by Zululand and Umhlathuze municipalities against the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government. Neither has a delivery date recorded. An older matter, reserved on 5 June 2024, is recorded as delivered on 7 August 2026.
Gauteng judges in Pretoria and Johannesburg
Pretoria and Johannesburg warrant separate scrutiny. The Annual Judiciary Report for 2024/25 records 42,120 civil matters in Pretoria and 24,811 in Johannesburg, the two largest seat-level totals in its national table. Together, their 66,931 matters represented approximately 45% of the national total of 148,724. That provides a concrete basis for describing Gauteng as the busiest High Court division for civil work in that reporting year.
The same annual report records delivery within three months for 894 of Pretoria’s 1,124 delivered reserved judgments, or 80%, and 1,214 of Johannesburg’s 1,447, or 84%. Both exceeded the 70% performance target. These figures concern judgments delivered during 2024/25; they do not include the unresolved backlog as completed judgments.
Against that record, the later backlog figures show mounting pressure. Pretoria’s reported list of judgments reserved for more than six months rose from 54 at the beginning of Term 4 of 2025 to 58 in Term 1 of 2026 and 61 in Term 2. Johannesburg’s increased more sharply, from four to 25 and then 31. Combined, the two seats’ overdue lists grew from 58 to 92 entries, an increase of 34, or approximately 59%.
| Measure | Pretoria | Johannesburg |
| All reserved judgments, Term 4 of 2025 | 313 | 207 |
| Reserved more than six months, Term 4 of 2025 | 54 | 4 |
| Reserved more than six months, Term 1 of 2026 | 58 | 25 |
| All reserved judgments, Term 2 of 2026 | 386 | 243 |
| Reserved more than six months, Term 2 of 2026 | 61 | 31 |
| Over-six-month share of reserved stock, Term 4 of 2025 | 17.3% | 1.9% |
| Over-six-month share of reserved stock, Term 2 of 2026 | 15.8% | 12.8% |
| Term 2 overdue entries with a delivery date subsequently or otherwise annotated in that report | 30 | 12 |
| Term 2 overdue entries with no delivery date recorded in that report | 31 | 19 |
The percentages above are calculated from the reports’ counts. They measure the composition of the reserved stock, not the percentage of all cases or all judgments handled late. The later delivery annotations also concern different dates and cannot be treated as a single November backlog count.
Pretoria’s overdue count increased, but its proportion of reserved judgments older than six months fell as the overall reserved stock grew. Johannesburg’s count and proportion both increased. Neither movement, by itself, establishes why delays occurred or how much work each judge completed.
Pretoria delays and individual delivery records
The oldest Pretoria entry with no delivery recorded is M R Sekhale v J J Sekhale, A242/23, listed under Acting Judge Stephens Thobane. Reserved on 30 July 2024, it was 622 days old at the 13 April 2026 cutoff. Thobane AJ has four Pretoria entries in the latest overdue list, all without recorded delivery dates, plus one further such entry in Johannesburg.
Next is Scheepers AJ’s Body Corporate of Valenze v Simphiwe Handsome Katise, 056743/22, reserved on 21 August 2024 and 600 days old at the cutoff. Another Scheepers matter reserved that same day, Herman Bester N.O. v NL Traders, is recorded as delivered on 13 July 2026. The two cannot be reported as having the same subsequent status.
The largest concentrations of Pretoria entries without delivery dates are associated with Judge Soraya Hassim and Judge Nomsa Khumalo, with six each, including joint matters. These are case attributions, not findings that either judge alone was responsible for drafting every judgment.
| Pretoria judge | Listed overdue entries attributed individually or jointly | Delivery recorded | No delivery recorded |
| Hassim J | 8 | 2 | 6 |
| Khumalo J | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| Thobane AJ | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Mngqibisa-Thusi J | 6 | 3 | 3 |
| Joubert AJ | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Molopa-Sethosa J | 2 | 0 | 2 |
This table selects judges associated with at least two entries without delivery recorded. A joint matter appears against each named judge, so the judge-level columns must not be added to obtain a court total.
Judge Hassim’s six include the jointly attributed criminal appeal Vusimuzi Nhlapo v The State, reserved on 28 August 2024, and energy-regulator disputes involving Swartland and Cape Town municipalities. Two other Hassim-attributed entries do record delivery, including ML Kgoane v Minister of Police on 20 July 2026.
Khumalo J’s six include Maenza Civils CC v The Public Protector, reserved on 26 February 2025, and two matters reserved on 23 April 2025. The separately listed P Kooverjie matter is recorded as delivered on 16 April 2026. Judge Nomsa Khumalo is a different person from Judge Mcedisi Patrick Kumalo, who also sits in the Labour Court as Kumalo AJ; their records are kept separate.
There is evidence of delivery elsewhere in Pretoria’s list. All four Acting Judge François Botes entries carry delivery dates, as do both Judge Colleen Collis entries and all five entries attributed individually or jointly to Judge Jabulani Nyathi. These annotations show progress on the listed cases, not a complete assessment of those judges’ work.
Johannesburg backlog growth and individual delivery records
Johannesburg’s oldest latest-report entry without delivery recorded is Wilbert Johannes Zikhali v Minister of Police, 31942/2010, attributed to Kumalo J. Reserved on 15 April 2025, it was 363 days old at the April 2026 cutoff. All four Johannesburg entries attributed to Kumalo J lack delivery dates.
Acting Judge Julian Joyner has six listed entries, five without delivery recorded. The sixth, Saxondene Investment v Khalipha, 13904/2018, is recorded as delivered on 6 May 2026. Acting Judge Sidwell Shangisa and Acting Judge Mamodupi Mohlala each have three listed entries, all without delivery dates.
| Johannesburg judge | Listed overdue entries | Delivery recorded | No delivery recorded |
| Joyner AJ | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| Kumalo J | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Shangisa AJ | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Mohlala AJ | 3 | 0 | 3 |
These four judges account for 15 of Johannesburg’s 19 latest-report entries without delivery recorded. The other four are attributed to Acting Judge Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, Acting Judge Stephens Thobane, Judge Gcina Malindi J and Von Ludwig AJ, one each.
Johannesburg’s four entries in the older, Term 4 of 2025 report all have recorded delivery dates in that report: two Judge Gcina Malindi matters, the Judge Stephen Kuny and Acting Judge Neels Coertse appeal, and an Acting Judge Ilse Vermaak matter. None of those four accounts for the latest list’s 19 entries without dates.
Pretoria’s older cohort has a different outcome. Of its 54 entries from Term 4 of 2025, 44 have a delivery date recorded in at least one of the three reports; eight reappear in Term 2 without delivery recorded; and two disappear without delivery being established by those reports. The latter are ML Sebata v Minister of Police, 42791/19, and Fisher E v Minister of Defence, A126/24. They remain verification questions, not proven current defaults.
Gauteng’s record therefore combines substantial throughput with a growing reported backlog beyond six months. A fair assessment of individual performance needs each judge’s full workload, completed judgments, case complexity, panel responsibilities and explanations for delay. These lists identify the cases requiring answers; they do not supply all those answers. The Johannesburg Labour Court is a separate court and is excluded from this Gauteng High Court comparison.
Judge Mcedisi Patrick Kumalo and the delayed judgment complaints
The backlog figures acquire a further dimension in the complaints concerning Judge Mcedisi Patrick Kumalo, whose name appears as “Mncedisi Kumalo” in the committee’s July ruling. His High Court designation, Kumalo J, and Labour Court designation, Kumalo AJ, refer here to the same judge. He is distinct from Judge Nomsa Khumalo, whose surname contains an “h”.
An urgent restraint case and the Levin complaint
In Levin v Kumalo J, [2026] ZAJSC 5, dated 16 April 2026, Deputy Chief Justice Dunstan Mlambo recommended escalation to a tribunal. Attorney Clifford Levin’s complaint concerned MSA Outsourcing Solutions v Strydom and Others, J850/2024, an urgent Labour Court restraint-of-trade application heard on 26 September 2024. Judgment followed on 22 May 2025. Its eventual delivery therefore did not dispose of the complaint about delay in time-sensitive litigation.
Mlambo recorded two unanswered invitations for Kumalo’s submissions and the emergence of further complaints. He considered those developments sufficient to warrant investigation beyond the ordinary remedial process. He expressly made no final finding of gross misconduct or gross incompetence.
The Katisi complaint and the wait affecting dismissed employees
A separate ruling, Katisi v Kumalo J, [2026] ZAJSC 18, dated 6 May 2026, concerned Labour Court proceedings involving Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality and former employees. An arbitration award had found the dismissal of 286 employees unfair and ordered reinstatement and compensation. The application before Judge Kumalo concerned retrieving the municipality’s archived review, rather than determining the original dismissals afresh.
The matter was heard on 18 June 2024; judgment was delivered on 26 November 2025, approximately 17 months later. The judgment refused retrieval and made the arbitration award an order of court. Mlambo recorded unanswered requests for an explanation and again recommended tribunal investigation. He expressly withheld any finding of gross misconduct, gross incompetence or other misconduct.
The joint July ruling and the alleged pattern
On 6 July 2026, a committee comprising Judges Chris Jafta, Halima Saldulker and Steven Majiedt considered the Nkosi, Skhosana and Levin complaints together in [2026] ZAJSC 32. Levin’s appearance in this decision repeats the earlier complaint; it is not another complainant.
Thomas Richard Nkosi’s Pretoria case was heard on 19 March 2024, with judgment recorded as issued on 17 September 2025. The ruling also recorded an unanswered leave-to-appeal application as at February 2026. Kenneth Skhosana complained about a dismissal-related matter heard on 24 July 2024, with judgment still outstanding when he complained in August 2025.
The committee recorded no responses to the complaints. It concluded that, considered collectively and if established, the alleged pattern met the prima facie threshold for gross incompetence or gross misconduct, and recommended a tribunal. That recommendation was not a final misconduct finding or proof that a tribunal had already been appointed.
The three published rulings thus concern four complainants across overlapping proceedings. They show why a judgment’s eventual delivery may resolve the immediate wait while leaving a complaint about the delay to be investigated. The committee proceedings also reinforce the distinction maintained throughout this report between a recorded delay, an allegation of misconduct and a final disciplinary finding.
Delivery status of the 2025 backlog
The older report adds a longer view of the problem. At the beginning of Term 4 of 2025, the judiciary reported 1,778 reserved judgments. Its detailed list identified 301 that had been reserved for more than six months.
Tracing those 301 entries through the Term 1 and Term 2 reports for 2026 produces a qualified answer to the question of what remains unresolved as at 3 November 2026:
| Documentary position of the 301 older entries | Entries |
| Delivery date on or before 3 November 2026 recorded in at least one report | 237 |
| Re-listed in Term 2 of 2026, without a delivery date in any of the three reports | 41 |
| Absent from the Term 2 list, with delivery not established by any of the three reports | 22 |
| Delivery annotation dated after 3 November 2026 | 1 |
| Total | 301 |
The reports leave 63 entries without an established delivery date, plus one with a future-dated annotation: 64 require confirmation. They do not establish that all 64 remain outstanding today. Of those, 41 have the stronger documentary trail of appearing again in the latest report without a delivery date. For the other 22, disappearance from the list leaves their position unexplained by these documents.
That distinction prevents an omission being reported as a completed judgment. It also prevents a stale reporting entry being presented as proof of continuing non-delivery. The judiciary’s public index, checked on 3 November 2026, listed Term 2 of 2026 as its latest reserved-judgment report. It supplies no comprehensive November status check.
The intervening report matters. Comparing only the two supplied PDFs leaves 81 of the older entries without an established delivery date: 42 re-listed without delivery recorded, and 39 absent without delivery established. Another entry has a future-dated delivery annotation. Term 1 supplies delivery dates for another 18 entries, reducing the total requiring confirmation from 82 to 64, including the future-dated entry. Seventeen of those entries had disappeared from the Term 2 list.
The eighteenth exposes a contradiction. In the Northern Cape section, Mhlanga v Road Accident Fund, case 2445/17, is recorded under Judge Albert Nxumalo as delivered on 3 March 2026. Yet the subsequent Term 2 report lists the same case and reservation date with a dash in the delivery column. This analysis places it among the 237 entries with a delivery date on or before 3 November 2026, flags the conflicting later entry, and does not count it among the 63 without any recorded date. The court should resolve that discrepancy.
The other anomaly is chronological. The older report records Sipho Mbakaza v Director of Public Prosecutions, case 2901/2024, under Acting Judge Young as delivered on 1 December 2026. That is after the date of this review. It may be a clerical error, but the analysis cannot correct it by assumption or count it as proof of delivery by 3 November. It is the sixty-fourth entry requiring confirmation.
There are clear examples of progress. The older report leaves delivery blank for the Constitutional Court’s two February 2025 Western Cape transport and public works matters, CCT 126/24 and CCT 128/24. The Term 2 report records both as delivered on 2 July 2026. Acting Judge Sandile Kuboni’s long-delayed Shoprite Checkers matter likewise moves from a dash in the older report to a recorded delivery on 12 May 2026.
But the national reported backlog beyond six months grew from 301 to 445 between these snapshots: an increase of 144 entries, or about 48%. Those are reported snapshot totals; they do not mean that 144 of the same cases were added or that the later delivery annotations describe a single common date.
The limits extend beyond the older overdue list. The 2025 report gives only aggregate figures for the other 1,477 reserved judgments. Without their case-level identities, these documents cannot establish how many of all 1,778 judgments remain reserved today.
The defensible finding is therefore specific: 63 of the 301 individually listed older entries have no established delivery date, and a further entry has a future-dated annotation. Those 64 require confirmation. A verified count still outstanding on 3 November 2026 requires current confirmation from the courts.
Six months is a reporting threshold
The report records 1,960 reserved judgments nationally at the beginning of Term 2. Of those, 445, approximately 23%, had been reserved for more than six months. The Johannesburg Labour Court accounted for 89 of those entries; Pretoria High Court accounted for 61.
Six months is the threshold used for publishing the detailed list. It is not the ordinary delivery target. The report explains that the judicial norms and standards require every effort to deliver within three months of the last hearing, subject to exceptional cases. It also sets out the Code of Judicial Conduct’s term-based delivery rule and its exceptions.
Those qualifications matter. The table records dates and judicial attribution; it does not supply an explanation for each delay, identify every procedural complication or establish misconduct. Nor does it identify the individual author responsible for the Constitutional Court matters, which are attributed collectively to “All”. Those entries cannot fairly be allocated to named judges for this ranking.
There is a further limit to what the figures can tell the public. The beginning-of-term snapshot and later delivery annotations answer different questions. The first records the backlog at a specified time. The second records some subsequent progress. Neither supplies a verified account of every case’s position on 3 November 2026.
The unanswered questions are concrete: which judgments without delivery dates have since been handed down, what explains the remaining delays, and when can the parties expect decisions?
For litigants whose matters appear in these tables, an updated delivery date would provide more than a statistical improvement. It would mark the end of a wait that, in several cases, had already lasted nearly three years.
Method and interpretation
Calendar-day ages run from reservation to the relevant beginning-of-term reporting date, not to 3 November 2026 and not from expiry of a judicial deadline. High Court and Labour Court ages in the ranking use 13 April 2026. Cases with a recorded delivery date are separated from cases without one. Separate case entries may concern related or consolidated matters. A panel attribution does not identify who was responsible for drafting.
The comparison reconciles the 301 individually listed entries in the Term 4 of 2025 report against the Term 1 and Term 2 reports for 2026. A missing entry in a later report is not treated as proof of delivery. The reports establish documentary status and do not supply a verified current backlog. Names and case references follow the source documents; clerical anomalies remain identified rather than silently corrected.