Innovation Maven (Pty) Ltd v CCMA (C976/2014) [2015] ZALCCT 64 (29 October 2015) per Van Niekerk J.

[22]      The CCMA guidelines referred to above suggest that where parties are represented (as they were for the larger part of the proceedings under review) a commissioner must respect the role of the representatives and not seek to assume or undermine them.  Of course, there can be no harm in a commissioner asking questions in clarification of any responses given by a witness during the course of his or her evidence, but these should ordinarily be confined to the end of the witness’s evidence and the parties afforded an opportunity to put further question to the witness following on those posed by the commissioner.

[23]      To the extent that it might be suggested that the commissioner’s interventions were consistent with the statutory obligation to conduct arbitration proceedings quickly, this is simply not the case.  It should be recalled that the proceedings under review, which extended over four days (excluding a day on which a postponement was garnted), concerned an individual dismissal in circumstances where there was a relatively uncomplicated dispute of fact that required determination.  Far from curtailing the proceedings and focusing the parties’ representatives on the material issues in dispute, the commissioner’s intervention served unnecessarily to protract the proceedings.  I have no doubt that had she left the parties’ representatives to present their cases and confined her intervention to genuine attempts to seek clarity on any particular issues that emerged from the evidence, the proceedings would have been completed sooner than they were.  For the reasons referred to below, the only remedy available to the applicant in the present circumstances is to have the matter remitted to the CCMA for rehearing.  The further delay in the determination of this dispute and the additional costs that may be incurred are  directly a consequence of the commissioner’s conduct.

[24]      There is another matter that is a cause for concern, one to which I have already alluded.  When parties appoint representatives to act on their behalf, that is their prerogative.  The parties’ representatives must be afforded both courtesy and respect by a commissioner, and their role in the arbitration process must be respected.  It is disrespectful for a commissioner to conduct the proceedings as if one or both parties’ representatives were not there, or have some minimal role to play.  Even when a commissioner decides to adopt an inquisitorial approach, this does not entitle the commissioner to reduce the role of a party’s representative to that of an observer.