Badubi at the time he was fired on February 20, 2023 was accused and found guilty of security breach. He and three others were accused of leaking President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s security vehicles. He later filed a review application to set aside the decision of Tlamelo Ngakane who was acting DG of DIS at the time and had signed the letter that fired him. Badubi’s review application forced AG and Ngakane to file an interlocutory application trying to stop the application. When dismissing the application, Justice Leburu said Badubi brought the review application within the structural dictates and sphere of operation of rules of court. “Put differently, the application was brought within the applicable four months period,” he said. Leburu explained that the court has a duty to shy away from submitting to the constraining bind of a narrower, unfair, unreasonable and arduous interpretation, in its quest to dispense substantive justice. “On that score, the word "brought" used in Rule 8, simply means filing with the Court. It is only after it has been filed that delivery to the respondent ensues, as envisaged by Rule 1 thereof. The computation of time therefore, starts with the date of becoming aware of the impugned decision and ends with the date of filing,” he said. Justice Leburu emphasised that in his judgment, Rules 1 and 8 of Order 61 luminously and without doubt, are associable signifiers of how a review application is to be brought (Rule 8) and subsequently delivered to the decision maker (Rule 1). He pointed out that the said rules outline two distinct processes, for purposes of computing the four months requisite period and that if the word "brought" as used in Rule 8 was meant to envisage delivery of the review application to the decision maker, the legislature, in its usual wisdom, could have gone further and used the phrase "brought" and delivered." “I therefore, do not subscribe to nor embrace the applicants’ submission that it meant filing and delivery of such a review application onto the respondent. If the court was to adopt the reasoning and logic of the two applicants, to the effect that "brought" connotes filing and delivery, then it will mean that the respondent would have filed his review application out of time, and thus non-suiting him, unless an application for leave to bring such late review application was firstly filed,” Leburu said. He added that access to substantive justice, should, as far as possible, be promoted, rather than the placing of procedural obstacles to the achievement of a just and efficient dispensation of substantive justice, as promised and ordained by the hallowed and over-arching ethos and epithets of rules of court. Meanwhile, the interlocutory application by AG and Ngakane was founded and riveted on two points, namely, the alleged failure to serve the decision maker in the review application, being Ngakane, and the alleged failure to file and serve him with the review application within four months after the date of his decision, in breach of rules of High Court.
AG's case
