Supreme court of Appeal / Appeals and Reviews

Appeals focus on the merits of the judgment itself. When you appeal against judgment, you are not telling the Judge or Magistrate that he was dishonest or biased or grossly negligent when he formulated his judgement.

However although he might have reached his judgement in good faith, you still disagree with the judgment, either on the law, or on the facts on  both the law and the facts. The procedure available to you is to appeal against the judgement of the court a quo(High court or Magistrate court).you apply that this judgment be set aside, or at least that portion of the judgement with which you are dissatisfied.

In an appeal a party’s dissatisfaction with the judgment of the court a quo may arise either because that party is unhappy with a finding of fact made by the court, e.g. the party is of the view that the court incorrectly believed or disbelieved a witness whose evidence was material to the case, or because the party is unhappy with a ruling of law made by the court.

It often happens that a party feels that the court got both the law and the facts wrong, and an appeal will then be lodged on both grounds.

Harms provide that: (i) where the trial court has made no finding on the credibility of witnesses, the court of appeal has to do its best on such material as it has before it to decide the credibility issue. (ii)If a court aqou committed an irregularity, the proceedings will be set aside unless the respondent can convince the court that that the appellant did not suffer any prejudice as a result of that irregularity.

Supreme Court act 59 of 1959, Steven Pete, David Hulme, Max du Plessis, Robin Palmer, and Omphemetse Sibanda.