What happened
Ms Khedama was arrested at King Shaka International Airport in December 2011 and held for several days before bail. Fingerprint verification later confirmed she was not the person the police were looking for, and the charges were withdrawn. In December 2013 she sued the Minister of Police for damages.
The High Court awarded general damages and ordered interest from the date of service of summons until payment, relying on section 2A of the Prescribed Rate of Interest Act 55 of 1975, which governs interest on unliquidated debts. The Supreme Court of Appeal upheld that interest order. The Minister took the interest point alone to the Constitutional Court.
What the court held
In a unanimous judgment written by Mathopo J, handed down on 29 June 2026 as Minister of Police v Khedama [2026] ZACC 27, the Constitutional Court granted leave to appeal and upheld the appeal on the interest point.
The court's reasoning turns on section 2A(5). The general rule in section 2A is that interest on an unliquidated debt runs from the date of demand or service of summons. Subsection (5) gives a court a discretion to fix a different date, and the court held that the discretion must be exercised where fairness requires a different result.
The Supreme Court of Appeal had not considered that discretion at all. More importantly, there was nothing to show that Ms Khedama's general damages had been assessed at their value on the date summons was served. They were quantified at the monetary values prevailing at judgment. Ordering interest from summons on an amount already expressed in judgment-date money substantially increased the compensation and produced an inequitable result.
The court's conclusion, in the terms of its own media summary: there is ordinarily no sound basis for awarding interest before judgment where the amount of general damages could not reasonably have been known or determined before the court assessed them. Where general damages are assessed at their value on the date of judgment, fairness generally requires interest to run from judgment to payment. The order was amended accordingly.
What it means for your practice
This is not a police case. It is an interest case, and it reaches every claim in which general damages are assessed at judgment-date values: unlawful arrest and detention, assault, defamation, medical negligence, and the general damages leg of motor vehicle and other personal injury claims.
Three consequences follow.
First, the prayer for interest "a tempore morae from date of service of summons" that most delictual particulars of claim carry as a matter of course is no longer safe on the general damages head. Expect defendants to resist it, and expect courts to ask what date the damages were valued at.
Second, settlement arithmetic changes. A claim issued in 2021 and settling in 2026 carried, under the old practice, five years of interest at the prescribed rate on the general damages. If the general damages are being valued in today's money, that interest is no longer the default. Any settlement proposal that still prices it in will be met with this judgment.
Third, the discretion cuts both ways. Section 2A(5) allows a court to choose a date, and the court was careful to say "ordinarily" and "generally". Where general damages were in fact valued at an earlier date, or where the defendant's conduct in the litigation justifies it, there is still an argument for an earlier date. But it now has to be made, with evidence of the valuation date, not assumed.
What to do on your files
Pull every open delictual matter with a general damages claim and look at three things.
Check the interest prayer in the particulars of claim. Where it claims interest from service of summons on general damages, decide whether to amend or to lead evidence on the valuation date. An unamended prayer invites a costs argument at the end.
Re-run the settlement figure on anything in negotiation. Strip pre-judgment interest from the general damages head, keep it on special damages that were liquidated or capable of calculation at an earlier date, and tell the client before the other side does.
Brief counsel on the valuation date. The judgment makes the date at which general damages are valued the pivot. If your expert or your argument values the loss at a date earlier than judgment, say so explicitly, because that is the fact that opens the section 2A(5) discretion in your client's favour.
The judgment was handed down on 29 June 2026. The court's media summary, which this note is drawn from, is on the Constitutional Court's website; the summary is not binding and the judgment itself should be read before you rely on it.
Source: Minister of Police v Khedama [2026] ZACC 27 (CCT 154/25), Constitutional Court, 29 June 2026. The court's own page: https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/judgement/648-minister-of-police-v-khedama-cct154-25