The Gauteng Provincial Liquor Board kept a Mamelodi restaurant’s liquor licence application in limbo for more than three years. It insisted on a municipal approval document that the law did not require as a precondition.
The Gauteng High Court has now declared the board’s demand unlawful. It ordered the board to decide the application within 15 court days.
The case concerns Khutso’s Place, a restaurant in Mamelodi East, Pretoria, operated by Manageng Ellen Mathosi.
Mathosi applied for a restaurant liquor licence on 20 December 2022. By the time the matter reached court, the board had neither approved nor rejected her application.
Instead, it refused to move forward without local authority approval, known as an LAA.
In a judgment delivered in October 2026, Acting Judge Matlapeng found that the board had no legal authority to make the document an additional requirement for considering a restaurant liquor licence application.
The judge said the board could not invent a requirement that the legislature had not imposed.
“The Board cannot achieve administratively, what neither the legislature nor the regulations have done normatively,” the judgment states.
The dispute is particularly striking because the board’s own inspection checklist had initially recorded the local authority approval requirement as not applicable.
Officials inspected the premises in July or August 2023. An inspection report followed on 1 September that year.
Mathosi sought an update on her application in December 2023. Further correspondence followed in 2024.
But on 2 May 2024, she was told that additional documents were required, including local authority approval.
She submitted the other requested documents in July 2024. She continued following up.
In November 2024, she formally disputed the demand for municipal approval. She pointed out that the board’s own inspection checklist had marked the requirement as not applicable.
Her attorneys intervened in April 2025. They challenged the demand and called on the board to decide the application.
By the end of April 2025, officials had confirmed that the application remained stalled because Mathosi had not supplied the disputed document.
She approached the High Court in July 2025. The board defended its position by relying on section 3(2)(b) of the Gauteng Liquor Act. It argued that the provision gave it discretion to require local authority approval.
The court rejected that interpretation. Section 23(4) of the Act specifically identifies the types of liquor licence applications that must include approval from the relevant municipal department. These include applications for taverns, pooled clubs, pubs, liquor stores and nightclubs.
The judge found that the board could not use its power to impose conditions on a licence to create an additional hurdle before an application could even be considered.
The judgment made clear that this did not exempt Khutso’s Place from applicable zoning, planning, environmental, building, health or other legal requirements.
The issue was narrower. The board could not insist on local authority approval as a statutory precondition for considering this restaurant liquor licence application.
The court also found that the board’s failure to make a decision was unlawful administrative conduct under the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act.
It rejected the idea that an application could remain frozen indefinitely because an official demanded a document that the law did not require.
The judge said the statutory framework contemplated that applications would be considered and decided, not left unresolved.
“The statutory scheme, does not contemplate that a completed application may simply be frozen indefinitely because an official has demanded a document which the statute does not require,” the judgment states.
The court did not grant Mathosi a liquor licence. That decision remains with the board.
Instead, it removed the unlawful obstacle and ordered the board to consider and finally determine the application within 15 court days, without insisting on the disputed approval document.
If the application is refused, the board must provide adequate written reasons. The judge also ordered the board to pay Mathosi’s legal costs, including counsel’s fees.
