By Oarabile Mosikare
Former South African Constitutional Court Justice Edwin Cameron faces a formal complaint before Botswana’s Judicial Service Commission (JSC). Businessman Bakang Seretse accuses him of apparent prejudgment, unequal application of procedural and evidentiary standards, and using intemperate and personalised judicial language.
Cameron served on South Africa’s Constitutional Court from 2009 until retiring in August 2019. The court’s records show he was appointed to the apex court in 2008. He later served as a non-resident Justice of Appeal in Botswana.
Seretse lodged the 98-page complaint on August 10, 2026, in his personal capacity and as a representative of Khulaco (Pty) Ltd and Basis Points Capital (Pty) Ltd. He signed and swore it before a Commissioner of Oaths in Gaborone that day. It bears a received stamp dated August 11, 2026.
Seretse asks the JSC to investigate Cameron’s conduct in two Botswana matters: the Basis Points/Maserati litigation and the Khulaco appeal, in which Cameron delivered judgment on July 31, 2026.
The complaint focuses on what Seretse calls an unusual pattern of highly personal language in judgments involving him.
In the 2024 Basis Points/Maserati judgment, Cameron wrote: Soon, a near-frenzy of looting depleted the honey.
He described the disputed consultancy agreement between Basis Points and the Directorate on Intelligence and Security (DIS) as equally bogus, a tawdry copycat, and related correspondence and an invoice as all equally fake.
The complaint alleges that these remarks went beyond findings about disputed transactions and became personal to Seretse. Cameron is quoted as writing: “If not from this clear pathway, how did Mr Seretse manage to accumulate his mass of luxurious assets? Realising he had to proffer some explanation, he put out the purported Basis Points / DIS ‘Consultancy Contract’.”
Seretse says the passage implied that he knowingly produced a false contract to explain allegedly illicit wealth.
The complaint says similar language appeared in the 2026 Khulaco appeal. Cameron allegedly wrote that a reader could infer Seretse had a sticky finger in the deal (indeed, many sticky fingers).
He also wrote: In their absence, a warrantable surmise is that a monstrous heist was in the making, one at the expense of the Government, and the taxpayers and citizens it represents.
Cameron referred as well to the whiff of fraud that strongly lingers.
Seretse says the repeated language is significant because Cameron authored the 2024 judgment involving him and was later selected for another appeal involving Seretse and the broader National Petroleum Fund controversy. He asks the JSC to investigate Cameron’s selection and whether his prior involvement should have prompted consideration of recusal.
The complaint distinguishes its allegations from an appeal against Cameron’s judgments. Seretse says he is not asking the JSC to substitute its views for those of the Court of Appeal, but to examine whether Cameron’s conduct complied with requirements of equality, integrity and impartiality.
He asks the JSC to register the complaint, allow Cameron to respond on oath and, if a prima facie case of judicial misbehaviour is established, appoint an independent disciplinary panel.
The complaint brings renewed scrutiny to a jurist whose career at South Africa’s highest court included significant contributions to constitutional jurisprudence. It concerns Cameron’s separate role as a Botswana appellate judge, and the allegations remain matters for investigation rather than established misconduct.
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