Full bench strips magistrates of deportation power; NERSA opens Eskom tariff consultation

Government Notice 7884 of 2 September 2026 invites written stakeholder comments and registrations for a virtual public hearing on the Eskom Retail Tariff Structural Adjustment (ERTSA) for the 2027/28 financial year. NERSA has published a consultation paper on its website. Written comments must be submitted by 2 October 2026 at 16:00, and requests to present at or attend the virtual public hearing (scheduled for 8 October 2026, 09:30–13:00 via Microsoft Teams) must be lodged by 16:30 on 2 October 2026. The hearing will not proceed if no stakeholder registers to make representations. The process is conducted under the National Energy Regulator Act 40 of 2004 and the Electricity Regulation Act 4 of 2006.

Six matters came before the full bench on automatic review. In each, a magistrate had convicted an accused under s 49(1)(a) of the Immigration Act 13 of 2002 for being an illegal foreigner. In five of the six cases the magistrate had also ordered deportation as part of the sentence. The sixth magistrate had correctly declined to do so.

The court held: The full bench held that magistrates' courts, as creatures of statute with no inherent jurisdiction, have no power to order deportation. Section 49(1)(a) creates the offence and prescribes a fine or imprisonment, but confers no deportation power on any court. The power to deport vests exclusively in immigration officers under s 34 of the Act. The court expressly declined to follow Cuna and the line of authority that followed it, finding those judgments incorrect and without statutory or jurisprudential basis. The deportation orders in five matters were set aside. In the sixth matter, the court reformulated the suspended sentence conditions to require the accused to report to the nearest Department of Home Affairs office within 30 days.

Legal impact: This ruling creates an inter-divisional conflict with the Gauteng Division's Cuna line of authority. Within the Western Cape, magistrates may no longer order deportation upon conviction under s 49(1)(a). The judgment has persuasive force nationally and signals that deportation orders routinely imposed by magistrates' courts across the country may be ultra vires. Until the Supreme Court of Appeal resolves the conflict, practitioners must treat the law as unsettled outside the Western Cape. The judgment also provides a template for permissible suspended-sentence conditions in immigration cases — requiring an accused to report to Home Affairs rather than ordering deportation directly.