In NEHAWU obo Zikalala v Department of Water and Sanitation and Another (D767/17) [2021] ZALCD 75 (27 October 2021) the court was tasked with a rather intriguing review application.
The employee had absented himself for over a month. The employee was dismissed by operation of law in terms of s 17 of the Public Service Act, 1994 (‘PSA’). He applied under s 17(3)(b) of the PSA to be reinstated. The Minister refused to approve the reinstatement with a single line of text. The employee then sought a review on the grounds of what can be equated to there being insufficient reasons and that it showed the Minister did not consider all the facts.
In his appeal for reinstatement the employee put up medical reasons for his absence. The Minsiter was quite succint stating that his reasons for denying the application are that, “amongst others”, his absence was not authorised, was without good cause and was well in excess of one calendar month.
The court was equally succinct, writing at paragraph 39
“The next question is whether the decision-maker’s brief reasons for rejecting this application sufficed. It bears mention that, for present purposes, I do not regard the provision of reasons as a free-standing legality obligation. Reasons have an instrumental function in legality reviews in that they permit a reviewing court to glance into the mind of the decision-maker to ascertain whether the decision was rationally connected to the material on which the decision-maker relied. I have set out above what material the Minister had before him when he declined to reinstate the applicant. In my view, his decision, the reasons he gave for it, and the factual basis of those reasons align. Could the reasons have been more detailed? Yes. But, however brief, they were, to put it colloquially, on point. The employee elected to show cause to be reinstated based solely on the idea that his original absence from work was medically justifiable. On the affidavits produced in support of his application, this argument does not hold and the Minister said so.”
The applicant was required to show good cause, the Minister’s reasoning adequately addressed this aspect.
Recent Comments