Although judicial proceedings will generally be bound by the requirements of natural justice to a greater degree than will hearings before administrative tribunals, judicial decision-makers, by virtue of their positions, have nonetheless been granted considerable deference by appellate courts inquiring into the apprehension of bias. This is because judges ‘are assumed to be [people] of conscience and intellectual discipline, capable of judging a particular controversy fairly on the basis of its own circumstances’: The presumption of impartiality carries considerable weight, for as Blackstone opined at p. 361 in Commentaries on the Laws of England III . . . ‘[t]he law will not suppose possibility of bias in a judge, who is already sworn to administer impartial justice, and whose authority greatly depends upon that presumption and idea’. Thus, reviewing courts have been hesitant to make a finding of bias or to perceive a reasonable apprehension of bias on the part of a judge, in the absence of convincing evidence to that effect.
The State proved that Thomson corruptly offered (the offer having been communicated to Shaik)
to give a benefit
which was not legally due
to a person, being Zuma,
who had been charged with duties, being the duties set out in s 96(2) of the Constitution
by virtue of the holding of the office of Deputy President of the RSA
with the intention to influence him
to commit or to do an act in relation to such duty. – SCA judgment in S v Shaik