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Advocate Portia Limakatso Nobanda Mooti SC

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Capacity: Advocate of the High Court of South Africa
Admission as an advocate: 1996
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: Black
Date of Birth: May 1966
Qualifications: BA (1992) LLB (1995)(University of Cape Town)

Key Judgements and Appearances:  

 

Candidate Biography | Updated August 2026

Portia Limakatso Nobanda Mooti SC is an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa and, in particular, a senior counsel, colloquially referred to as silk.

She carries with her a broad litigation practice and a widening body of acting experience, having sat regularly as an acting judge of the High Court.

Born in Johannesburg, Nobanda Mooti holds a BA, majoring in English, and an LLB from the University of Cape Town. She was admitted as an advocate and joined the Johannesburg Society of Advocates in 1996.

Her practice began in criminal law, personal injury, divorce and labour matters, and broadened over the years into commercial, medical-negligence and administrative-law litigation. In September 2014, she was conferred the status of Senior Counsel.

As counsel, Adv Nobanda Mooti has appeared across constitutional, administrative, mining and commercial law, a good deal of it for the State. In the Supreme Court of Appeal, she appeared in Van den Heever v Minister of Minerals and Energy, a leading decision on what constitutes the abandonment of mineral rights, and in the Constitutional Court, she appeared in Abore v Minister of Home Affairs, an urgent asylum matter in which the Court confirmed that the Ruta principle – that a person facing deportation may nonetheless apply for asylum – survived the amendment of the Refugees Act.

That appellate and constitutional work sits alongside a long trial practice in criminal, personal-injury, medical-negligence and commercial matters.

Since 2010, she has sat regularly as an acting judge, and a number of her own judgments have since been tested on appeal. In RNT obo DORM v Amanfo, she presided over a medical-negligence trial arising from an infant’s birth injury. She found that Dr Amanfo had negligently failed to adequately monitor the mother after augmenting labour, while the hospital’s midwives had also failed to properly monitor the foetal heart rate and contractions. That judgment was taken to the Supreme Court of Appeal and upheld (Itokolle-Clinix Private Hospital v MNT obo DORM).

More recently, Mooti delivered a dissenting judgment in Pine Glow Investments (Pty) Ltd t/a Caltex Mpumalanga North Marketer v Controller of Petroleum Products and Others. The Full Court considered whether petroleum retail and site licences had lapsed after retail operations did not commence within the period prescribed by Regulation 24(1). While the majority dismissed the appeal, Mooti held that the retail licence had lapsed by operation of the regulation when the retailer failed to commence operations within the prescribed period or obtain an extension. She further held that the corresponding site licence was consequently invalid and would have upheld the appeal.

Two of her other judgments were reversed on appeal. In Imobrite (Pty) Ltd v DTL Boerdery CC, she declined, as an abuse of process, a secured creditor’s application to wind up a close corporation; the SCA took a different view, holding that a secured creditor may still seek a winding-up once a statutory demand goes unmet. And in Masako v Masako, a rescission application in a matrimonial dispute, the SCA held that she had conflated an attorney’s authority to depose to an affidavit with the authority to conduct the litigation and remitted the matter.

Her record is therefore that of a senior practitioner at ease across the full civil and criminal spectrum, and of an acting judge whose work – as with most who sit – has been affirmed in part and corrected in part on appeal.

The question is less one of exposure than of consistency: her birth-injury judgment withstood scrutiny in the SCA, while the Imobrite and Masako reversals turned on questions of insolvency procedure and civil practice on which the appeal court preferred a different view.

Adv Mooti also contributes to the profession’s governance: she sits on a Legal Practice Council disciplinary structure dealing with complaints against practitioners and serves as an LPC examiner assessing pupils for admission as advocates. She is a member of the Black Lawyers Association and SAWLA.

She now frequently sits as an acting judge across various High Court divisions, presiding over civil and criminal trials, full-court and full-bench appeals, and opposed and unopposed motion proceedings.

Adv Mooti comes before the JSC as an experienced senior counsel with a broad practice and a growing acting record. Her experience spans both complex litigation and institutional decision-making across the public and private sectors. The question for the JSC will be whether her three decades at the Bar, silk status and recent acting work translate into readiness for permanent appointment to the Gauteng Division.

ly sat, albeit unsuccessfully, before the JSC for appointment to the SCA. Judge Bloem has again, thrown his hat in the ring, this time hoping that the bell will indeed ring with him presiding in the SCA.