These are the 10 things we know about Danny Jordaan’s powerhouse lawyer
Mamodupi Mohlala-Mulaudzi.
Pic: Facebook.
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Mamodupi Mohlala-Mulaudzi granted 702’s Karima Brown an interview last night in which she confirmed she is the legal representative of rape accused and South African Football Associate (Safa) president Danny Jordaan.
South African social media’s rumour-mill has gone into overdrive, wondering if she is the former director-general who won twice against the president and his ministers. Here is what you need to know about her:
Writing to chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng on October 12, 2015, to nominate the admitted attorney of the high court as a “commissioner of the [Independent] electoral commission (IEC)”, Sandile July of Werksman Attorneys reminds Mogoeng that Mohlala-Mulaudzi served as the director-general of the department of communications under then minister General Siphiwe Nyanda.
After falling out with Nyanda in July 2010, the then suspended Mohlala-Mulaudzitold President Jacob Zuma through an affidavit deposed with the Labour Court that General Siphiwe Nyanda did not have the powers to fire her and that the minister was in violation of the law.
After winning her fight with the minister, Zuma agreed to move her to a different position at the National Consumer Commission, which falls under the department of trade and industry. In July 2012 the then National Consumer Commissioner Mohlala-Mulaudzi said she discovered, via a job advert in a Sunday newspaper advertising her position, that she had been fired
Before the two court cases, Mohlala-Mulaudzi had previously worked as a Pensions Fund Adjudicator, where she faced criticism about the slow pace at which her office issued determinations. She released figures in 2017 that indicated she had reduced the backlog of cases by about a third over the past year and dealt with a record number of complaints since taking over the office.
In a separate letter written to the acting secretary of the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), Sello Chiloane, July wrote: “Mohlala currently serves as the first ever black woman to chair the Gauteng Rental Housing Tribunal. The commission is informed that the former civil servant holds BA, LLB as well as LLM degrees augmented by a mini-MBA and an executive management programme.”
South African Football Association president Danny Jordaan (C), pictured on July 26, 2014.
According to the letter, she also served as a the commissioner of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), where “none of her rulings she made in this capacity were ever challenged in a court of law, the parties accepted the finding (sic) as correct and abided with the finding thereof”.
In the course of her tenure as a part-time senior commissioner at the CCMA, Mohlala-Mulaudzi made rulings there in a labour context. None of the rulings were ever appealed nor taken on review.
It is not clear why the former Harare Secondary School student was not appointed as a commissioner. Two days after her nomination, President Zuma appointed his former special projects adviser Vuma Glenton Mashinini as chairperson. Janet Love, a former ANC MP, was appointed in April 2016 to fill a vacant position created by the resignation of Raenette Taljaard in February 2015.
On 25 October 2016, a social media post congratulated the director of Mohlala Attorneys for her appointment as a board member of the South African Diamonds and Precious Metals Regulator. The website of the regulator does confirm if she is part of the 16 board of directors chaired by Dr Sipho Manase.
The attorney is full-time director of her own company, Mohlala Attorneys, and works part-time as a chairperson of Gauteng Housing Tribunal. She said her decision to represent Jordaan is a professional as “I took an oath when I was admitted as an attorney to protect the interests of my client”. “Therefore there is nothing untoward about that”, she told The Citizen earlier.
