Legal council wins court bid to ensure 'dishonest' body positivity conveyancer can't practise law

Body positivity campaigner and conveyancer Zietta van Rensburg can no longer practise law after two judges ordered the enforcement of a ruling that suspended her, pending an investigation into allegations of multimillion-rand fraud against her.

In a judgment delivered last week, Mpumalanga High Court in Mbombela Judge Brian Mashile and Acting Judge Lizanne Coetzee found that the Legal Practice Council (LPC) could not "afford to risk its reputation and the trust the public has invested in it by standing back and doing nothing hoping that [Van Rensburg and her firm] will not repeat their indiscretions". 

"A betrayal of the trust of this magnitude has to be treated with the utmost caution, lest there is a public outcry that the LPC has permitted a practitioner to continue to practice, her indiscretions notwithstanding," Mashile stated, in a ruling that Coetzee concurred with.