CEPPWAWU obo Sicedile v Sasol Mining (Pty) Ltd & others [2026] ZALCJHB 405

Date of Judgment & Seat of Court: 21 October 2026, Labour Court, Johannesburg

Case No: JR2372/23

Name of Judge(s): Mhambi AJ

Summary of Factual Matrix:

Ms Sicedile, a long-serving Engineering Foreman at Sasol's Thubelisha Colliery responsible for supervising a team performing underground electrical work, was charged with misconduct arising from events of 3 to 5 July 2022. She was found guilty of permitting high-risk work to proceed on 4 July 2022 without a lock-out (in breach of a life-saving safety rule) and of failing to ensure that a job safety analysis was in place, acquitted of a third charge, and dismissed. A CCMA commissioner, preferring the evidence of her line manager, found the dismissal procedurally and substantively fair.

CEPPWAWU, on her behalf, applied under section 145 of the LRA to review the award, seeking substitution or remittal. It contended that the commissioner cited no authority, ought to have recused himself after allegedly disclosing a conversation with the employee's spouse, failed to deal with procedural defects at the internal enquiry, conflated the conduct of 3 and 4 July, ignored a concession that the risk had been eliminated, applied an inconsistent sanction, overlooked her documentary evidence, and failed to weigh her long service and clean record.

Summary of Findings:

[4] ‘For the reasons that follow, I am not persuaded that the award is one that a reasonable decision-maker could not reach on the material that was before the commissioner. The grounds of review, properly analysed, amount in substance to an invitation to reconsider the merits of the dispute as though this were an appeal. The application must fail.’

[14] ‘It is by now trite, but it bears repetition in a matter such as this, that a review under section 145 of the LRA is not an appeal. The reviewing court does not ask whether the commissioner was right or wrong, nor whether it would itself have arrived at the same conclusion. The question is the narrower one settled in Sidumo and Another v Rustenburg Platinum Mines Ltd and Others[3]: is the decision reached by the commissioner one that a reasonable decision-maker could not reach on the material before him?[4] The statutory review grounds in section 145 are suffused with, and are to be read through the prism of, that constitutional standard of reasonableness.’

[16] ‘The enquiry is therefore ultimately outcome-based. A piecemeal assault upon individual findings of fact or credibility, absent a demonstration that the result is one no reasonable commissioner could reach on the totality of the evidence, does not establish a reviewable irregularity. It is against these principles that the applicant's grounds must be measured.’

[17] ‘The complaint that the commissioner referred to no case law and did not in terms invoke the law of evidence does not, without more, disclose a reviewable defect. Section 138 of the LRA requires a commissioner to determine the substantial merits of a dispute with the minimum of legal formality. The award identifies the correct issue, correctly locates the onus on the employer, and applies the Code of Good Practice: Dismissal to the facts. Terse or inelegant reasoning is not a ground of review where the result is one a reasonable commissioner could reach. This complaint is without merit.’

[18] ‘This is, on the face of it, the applicant's most serious complaint, for a well-founded apprehension of bias would vitiate the award irrespective of the merits. The test is that stated in President of the Republic of South Africa v South African Rugby Football Union[9] whether a reasonable, objective and informed person would, on the correct facts, apprehend that the commissioner would not bring an impartial mind to bear on the issues.[10] Two difficulties confront this ground on the papers before me. The first is that the alleged disclosure by the commissioner of a conversation with the employee's spouse is pleaded in the vaguest of terms and is not to be found on the record. A review is decided on the record of the proceedings; an allegation of misconduct on the part of a commissioner that cannot be located in the transcript, and which the employer disputes, cannot found a review. The second is that no application for the recusal of the commissioner was ever made during the arbitration. A party who is aware of the facts said to give rise to an apprehension of bias, and who nonetheless allows the proceedings to run their course without seeking recusal, ordinarily cannot be heard to complain of that apprehension for the first time on review. The ground is not established.’

[19] ‘It is well established that arbitration before the CCMA is a hearing de novo, in which the fairness of the dismissal is determined afresh on the evidence led at arbitration, so that defects in the internal process do not, without more, render a dismissal procedurally unfair.[11] Nor is workplace procedural fairness to be judged by the exacting standards of a criminal trial; a fair opportunity to be heard suffices.[12] The commissioner had before him the evidence of Mr Manya, which he was entitled to accept, that the employee had been afforded a proper opportunity to state her case, and the concession of her own representative that the interpreter complaint went only to quality and status. His conclusion that no material procedural unfairness had been established falls comfortably within the bounds of reasonableness.’

[20] ‘Both points find support in the record. Neither, however, is decisive. The misconduct of which the employee was convicted is the performance of high-risk work without the prescribed job safety analysis and without a proper lock-out that is to say, the breach of the safety procedure and not the eventuation of an accident. That the residual electrical risk had passed by the time Mr Campher intervened does not answer the charge that the work was undertaken without the isolation and risk assessment that the rules required. The events of 3, 4 and 5 July were, moreover, interlinked on the evidence the work was planned for 5 July but performed early, and the commissioner's focus was throughout on whether high-risk work had been done without proper procedure, which was the 4 July conduct that grounded the conviction.’

[21] ‘The commissioner's preference for the evidence of the line manager over that of the employee was a credibility finding that he was entitled to make, and his inference that an experienced foreman ought to have appreciated the hazardous nature of the work was a rational one. The logbook finding that a lock-out of some three minutes was recorded and signed for when no proper lock-out had been performed was likewise a finding open to him on the evidence, notwithstanding the competing explanation advanced by the employee. The resolution of such disputes of fact on the probabilities and on the credibility of the witnesses is the very task entrusted to the commissioner, and a reviewing court will not substitute its own view unless the finding is one that no reasonable commissioner could make. These findings do not meet that description.’

[22] ‘The parity principle is a recognised incident of substantive fairness, but it is neither absolute nor decisive.[13] It avails an employee only where it is established that the comparators were truly similarly circumstanced that they were subject to the same rule, had the same knowledge, and engaged in materially the same conduct. The difficulty for the applicant is that the record does not establish that the persons relied on were comparators in that sense; on the contrary, the employee’s own position was that she bore supervisory responsibility for compliance as the foreman legally appointed over the team, which distinguishes her from the artisans and others she names. While the award does not analyse the parity contention in terms, I am not persuaded, on the totality of the evidence, that an express treatment of it could reasonably have altered the outcome, given the gravity of the safety breach and the employee's supervisory responsibility. Measured against Herholdt and Mofokeng, the omission had no distorting effect on a result that was otherwise reasonable.’

[23] ‘The complaint that the commissioner failed to refer, in his analysis, to the employee's documentary bundles does not carry the matter further. A commissioner is not obliged to mention every document placed before him; the question, again, is one of materiality. The documents relied on went in the main to support the employee's oral version, which the commissioner rejected on credibility grounds, and I am not persuaded that engagement with them could reasonably have produced a different result. As to sanction, it is so that the award does not expressly weigh the employee's long service and clean record against the seriousness of the misconduct. But the determination of sanction is pre-eminently the province of the commissioner,[14] and in a deep-mining environment a serious breach of a life-saving safety rule by the supervisor responsible for the team's compliance will ordinarily justify dismissal, notwithstanding long service and a clean record. The conclusion that dismissal was a fair sanction was one reasonably open to the commissioner on the evidence.’

[24] ‘Standing back and applying the reasonableness standard to the totality of the evidence, the award, notwithstanding the criticisms that may fairly be made of its drafting, falls within the band of decisions to which a reasonable commissioner could come. The core findings, that high-risk work was performed without the prescribed job safety analysis and without a proper lock-out, that the employee as the responsible foreman ought to have ensured compliance, and that this justified dismissal in a safety-critical environment, are supported by the evidence of the line manager, which the commissioner was entitled to accept, and are not perverse. The grounds of review, individually and cumulatively, do not establish a defect that distorted the outcome; they seek, in truth, a re-hearing of the merits that a review does not permit. The application accordingly falls to be dismissed.’

[25] ‘In terms of section 162 of the LRA, costs in this Court are governed by the requirements of the law and fairness and do not follow the result as a matter of course.[15] Having regard to the nature of the dispute, to the ongoing collective relationship between the union and the employer, and to the fact that Ms Sicedile pursued the review in the bona fide, albeit mistaken, belief that the award was assailable, I consider that the interests of justice are best served by making no order as to costs.’

Relief: The review application was dismissed, with no order as to costs.

Judgment on SAFLII