A review of judicial enforcement of arbitral awards in South Africa

• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Rashri Baboolal‐Frank
• Date: 01 December 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21364

PRACTICE NOTE

A review of judicial enforcement of arbitral

awards in South Africa

Rashri Baboolal-Frank

Department of Procedural Law, Faculty

of Law, University of Pretoria, Pretoria,

South Africa

Correspondence

Rashri Baboolal-Frank, Department of

Procedural Law, Faculty of Law,

University of Pretoria, Lynnwood Road,

Private Bag X20, Hatfield, Pretoria 0028,

South Africa.

Email: rashri.baboolal@up.ac.za

Abstract

This article postulates the constitutional ethos of

upholding contracts entered between parties on the

principle of good faith in practice. This is aligned to the

international principle of respecting party autonomy

between parties in court. A party cannot easily negate

upon a contract that stipulates that a dispute must be

referred to arbitration and furthermore that the arbitra-

tion award is binding upon the parties and not subject

to appeal. This article aims to discuss that there is judi-

cial enforcement of arbitral awards in South African

courts. There is no distinction between national and

international enforcement of arbitral awards. The prin-

ciple of party autonomy is the cornerstone of the

enforcement of arbitral awards. From a South Africa

perspective, both national and international legislation

supports the recognition and enforcement of arbitral

awards. This article elucidates the intricacies of the

enforcement of arbitral awards and the protection of

party's interests to the proceedings. This article explores

the consequences of the antithetical approach to arbi-

tration agreements and proceedings. The judiciary's

practice is to uphold the contractual principle of con-

sensus between the parties, as opposed to allowing

Senior Lecturer, Advocate of the High Court of South Africa. Dr. Baboolal-Frank holds the following degrees, LLB,

LLM, LLD and MBA.

Received: 29 June 2021 Revised: 26 September 2022 Accepted: 9 October 2022

DOI: 10.1002/crq.21364

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

© 2022 The Author. Conflict Resolution Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Conflict Resolution Quarterly. 2022;40:271–277. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crq 271