The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development has confirmed it had received a letter of resignation from Judge Mabel Jansen.
She had written to the president and Minister Michael Masutha informing them of her resignation.
“Minister Masutha has acknowledged the letter, thanked her for her valuable service and is processing the letter for the president’s attention,” the department said in a statement.
“Judge Jansen was on special leave following comments she made which gave rise to a complaint to the Judicial Services Commission (JSC). The JSC was busy processing the complaint when she tendered her resignation.
In a 2015 Facebook discussion on the public page of filmmaker Gillian Schutte, Jansen made a series of comments, including that 99% of the criminal cases she heard were of “black fathers/uncles/brothers raping children as young as five”.
She wrote: “Want to read my files: rape, rape, rape, rape, rape, rape of minors by black family members...”
In later messages Jansen said that in black culture, “a women is there to pleasure men... and that gang rapes of babies, mothers and daughters were a pleasurable pastime”.