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Judge Mfuniselwa Elijah Nkosi

Mr. M E Nkosi_3051

Capacity: Judge
First appointed as a judge: July 2021 (KwaZulu-Natal High Court, Durban)
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: African
Date of Birth: November 1963
Qualifications: BProc (1988) (University of Zululand), LLB (1990) (University of Natal, now UKZN)

 

Key Judgments

Candidate Biography | Updated August 2026:

Judge Mfuniselwa Elijah “Vusi” Nkosi is a judge of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court.

Nkosi has spent the last four years quietly building a specialist competition-law portfolio and now seeks a permanent seat on the Competition Appeal Court.

Nkosi took his BProc at the University of Zululand and his LLB at the University of Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal). He began his career at a community law centre before joining Shepstone & Wylie Attorneys in Durban, where he spent most of his working life, rising from candidate attorney  to partner. His practice centred on local government and administrative law, advising public-sector clients.

After several acting stints, Nkosi was appointed to the KwaZulu-Natal High Court on 1 July 2021. Since 2022 he has acted as a judge of the Competition Appeal Court, and it is there that most of his significant judgments now sit.

He wrote the court’s judgment in Sunrise Energy v Strategic Fuel Fund Association, allowing Sunrise, the operator of the Saldanha Bay liquefied-petroleum-gas import terminal, to be heard on the foreclosure and public-interest concerns it raised against a state entity’s acquisition of an LPG wholesaler.

He co-wrote Takata South Africa v Competition Commission, a procedural ruling in the Competition Commission’s cartel case against suppliers of vehicle occupant-safety components, including airbags.

In eMedia Investments v MultiChoice, he sat on the court that decided whether MultiChoice could drop several of eMedia’s channels from its DStv platform once their content-supply agreement had ended.

Nkosi, in Cape Gate (Pty) Limited v Competition Tribunal and Others, delivered a minority judgement, championing a literal and pragmatic interpretation of the law. Briefly, the core issue in this case was whether an extraordinary six-year delay by the Competition Tribunal in delivering its decision on price-fixing allegations breached its statutory and constitutional obligations to act expeditiously. The Court also scrutinised several procedural irregularities, specifically whether “outsourcing” judicial drafting to a non-panel member and relying on new legal authorities without party input rendered the final decision unlawful and irrational. Ultimately, the judges had to determine if these cumulative failures fatally compromised the integrity of the adjudicative process,

Nkosi found that the statutory requirement in section 52(2)(a) for the Competition Tribunal to conduct proceedings “as expeditiously as possible” is strictly confined to the public hearings themselves and does not legally extend to the time taken to issue reasons. While acknowledging that the six-year delay was “unreasonable,” he maintained that once a decision is handed down, it can no longer be reviewed for a “failure to take a decision” under PAJA. Nkosi’s view was that the court should exercise its discretion to overlook the delay, fearing that setting aside the decision would cause widespread “disgruntlement” in the scrap metal industry and undermine the administration of justice, as he believed the underlying finding of price-fixing was substantively sound

Notably, Nkosi’s work is not confined to competition law. At the KwaZulu-Natal High Court, he has written full-bench criminal-appeal judgments, dismissing the fraud, corruption and money-laundering appeal in Shabalala v S, and he sat on the full bench that rejected the appeal of Joseph Ntshongwana, the “axe killer”, who had raised a defence of pathological criminal incapacity, an outcome the Supreme Court of Appeal later upheld.

Having authored Competition Appeal Court judgments for four years, Nkosi is one of the more experienced acting hands on that court. The JSC interview is likely to test whether his competition-law grounding as a judge outweighs a career that, until 2021, was spent largely in an administrative law practice rather than specialist commercial litigation.

 

 

April 2021 Interview:

Mr Mfuniselwa Elijah Nkosi’s April 2021 interview for a position on the KZN Division of the High Court was successful. He was nominated for appointment.

April 2018 Interview:

April 2018 Interview Synopsis:

An attorney who consults widely with local government, Vusi Nkosi was taken to task over an article he had authored for the industry magazine, De Rebus.

Penned in 2009 after the Constitutional Court’s judgment striking down the KwaZulu-Natal Prevention and Eradication of Slums Act, Nkosi had argued the court had erred in its decision.

Nkosi had helped draft the legislation, which vested wide-ranging powers in the executive to order local municipalities, government departments and enterprises and private landowners to evict squatters from their land.

Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng said that while he was “all for judges being criticised” he found the article “strongly” suggested the court had reached its decision because it sought to “appease” Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shack dweller movement that was looking to have the legislation struck down.

Nkosi did not defend the position he had adopted in the article substantively. He first apologised for his “choice of wording” and then said he “was not saying my views were right” because his only intention was ensure “robust” debate about the issue.

Mogoeng wouldn’t let up, observing that the comments “casts some kind of aspersions” on the independence of the country’s highest court, suggesting that its justices were “corrupted” and unable to adjudicate without “fear, favour or prejudice”.

Nkosi reiterated that he had erred with his choice of words and did, again, not defend his position.

He was also taken to task over comments he had made during the interview that he often tried to brief black and female counsel when there were “less complex” issues to deal with.

Nkosi told the commission that he had a “firm policy” at his firm — one of the largest in the country — to give black females work: “When I have a matter that is not too complex I look for black female counsel to brief,” he said.

Again, when probed, Nkosi’s answers were deficient. He backtracked saying his choice of words were again poor and that he often went to enlist black and female counsel he found they were already busy so ended up briefing pale males.

Nkosi crashed and burned — like a shack quickly being eaten by a fire racing through a densely populated settlement.