Mr Karikan on SABC News. On air: when court cases are televised, the public is positive about the judiciary.
Mr Karikan • Founder & President of JASA • Senior Magistrate and District Court Judge
Dear colleagues, and hello to everyone who walks with us — attorneys, advocates, prosecutors, traditional leaders, court staff, and families who wait on hard wooden benches every Monday morning.
I write as Mr Neelan Karikan, Founder and President of the Judicial Officers Alliance of South Africa. If you have opened this newsletter with a cup of tea after a long roll, that is exactly who it is for.
JASA is not a trade union in the ordinary sense. We are a covenant. We exist so that the people who sit in Magistrates’ Courts are not left to argue, alone, for the dignity the Constitution already promised them.
Section 165 is written in plain language. The courts are independent. They apply the law without fear, favour or prejudice. Organs of state must assist and protect those courts. It does not say “except the court down the road that hears the maintenance enquiry and the protection order.”
This issue is longer on purpose. It keeps the arguments you already know, adds the case law that belongs in the top drawer, and then — because a bench that never laughs is a bench that breaks — a comic, a quiz, and a page you can write on.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for staying on the bench. And thank you to every friend of JASA who has decided that this fight is not only ours.
“Whether you resign or retire, we are still accountable as judicial officers. High Court judges are judges for life. It is the
same cloth.”
— Mr Karikan, June 2026