The campaign by Western Cape judge president John Hlophe to avoid possible impeachment has, in many ways, exposed the SA judiciary’s almost complete inability to hold itself accountable — and created an unfolding crisis that threatens to destroy one of SA’s most important courts.

Hlophe is in the midst of an ongoing battle with two Constitutional Court justices, who accused him of attempting to influence them to rule in favour of then ANC president Jacob Zuma in 2008, and a very ugly war with his deputy, Patricia Goliath...