Judgment No. SC 26/18 9 Civil Appeal No. SC 164/16 The court a quo failed to appreciate the point that an Arbitral award cannot be founded on an illegality. An illegal act is void and cannot be enforced. As LORD DENNING stated in MacFoy v United Africa Co Ltd [1961] 3 All ER 1169 (PC) at 1172I: “If an act is void, then it is in law a nullity. It is not only bad, but incurably bad. There is no need for an order of the court to set it aside. It is automatically null and void without more ado, though it is sometimes convenient to have the court declare it to be so. And every proceeding which is founded on it is also bad and incurably bad. You cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stay there. It will collapse.” The above dictum is apposite. In casu, once the Labour Court found that the performance based scheme was illegal, which bonus scheme the Arbitrator had declared illegal, it was incumbent upon it as an appeal court to set aside the arbitral award upon which the back-pay was awarded. The court however, notwithstanding its finding of illegality, went ahead to uphold the award. In this respect, the court a quo erred. In an appeal this Court will not simply deal with the direct dictates of an order but also its effects. In Williams & Anor v Msipa N.O. & Ors SC 22/10, the court said: “The court must be able to intervene not only against the direct dictates of the judgment of the lower court but also against its effects. See Macdonald v Canada (AG) (1994) I SCR 311@329”. The effects of the judgment of the court a quo is to sanction an illegality. The judgment does not serve the law. Rather it enforces what it has itself found to be void. There is a patent contradiction. Accordingly its decision should be set aside on that basis.