Willis JA in South African Dental Association v Minister of Health (20556/2014) [2015] ZASCA 163 (24 November 2015) with majority judgment by Navsa and Swain JJA (Shongwe and Zondi JJA concurring):
[61] I have had the privilege of reading the draft judgment prepared my brothers Navsa and Swain. I agree with the order that they have proposed as well as their reasoning, except for what appears in paragraph 59. The stance of SADA may have been unfortunate. Its attitude towards the registration and regulation of dental assistants may also have been less than astute and even unwise. This does not entail that its attitude has been ‘condescending’, or ‘patronising’ or ‘disingenuous’ or ‘deplorable’ to the extent that it deserves moralistic censure from this court.
[62] It needs to be clear that the appellant has failed in this case because the law is against it and not because judges are, necessarily, inherently enthusiastic ‘regulators’. Our personal views should, ordinarily, be irrelevant. It is not, however, entirely irrelevant or undeserving of judicial comprehension that the dental profession has functioned fairly well for decades, if not centuries, without the benefit of the regulation of the occupation of dental assistants. Teeth have, by and large, successfully been extracted, drilled, filled, replaced with implants and crowns and so on, without there being a register of dental assistants. We have survived the discomforts of the dentist’s chair with some grins and plenty of forbearance, unassisted by the regulation of dental assistants.