The President does not have to pay for court action lodged against him to say what he planned to do about pardons, the Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday.

On September 30 last year, Mqabukeni Chonco and a group of 384 people - mostly Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) members - successfully sought a court order which forced the President to process their pardon applications, lodged with the Department of Justice as far back as 2003.

In that order, the Justice Minister and the President came under fire from the court, saying that the long wait was "unacceptable".

In October, nine days after the judgment, the applicants filed their first papers in a follow-up application, saying that the President was now the respondent, and that there had been another delay in processing the pardons.

The President replied to their papers in December and said that he intended to finalise the pardons by the end of January 2010.

The group, however, decided to proceed with the matter, and a date in the Constitutional Court was set down for February.

When the matter was heard, the President submitted an affidavit with an update to say that he had already considered 384 applications and had rejected 230.

An interim order prevented him from finalising other applications and he was also waiting for the Constitutional Court's final say on that matter - which eventually ordered that victims and their families must be consulted during the pardons process.

The President said that he had also needed to obtain legal advice on how best to deal with the applications.

So, with the update on the pardons process dealt with, the litigants focused on getting the court to order that the President pay the costs of that application.

Reading the judgment, Judge Sisi Khampepe said that the applicants had felt that litigation was their only real "bargaining chip" to force him to move forward with the applications.

"The past conduct of the Presidency gives some credence to this argument," said Khampepe.

"Throughout the history of this matter, it would seem that the Presidency has taken action only in response to the litigation."

However, the judges said that setting that process in motion only nine days after they had delivered judgment was too quick and that they had not intended investigating viable alternatives.

They had not even written to the President before instituting the legal action, arguing that there would be no point, given the history of the case. They also knew that judgment on the other pardons matter was still pending.

"It was therefore not reasonable to proceed without putting the President on terms," said Khampepe.

It was also not reasonable to proceed once the President had filed his December affidavit saying that he intended finalising the pardons by the end of January.

"In my view, the President's previous tardiness cannot justify the applicants' stance," she continued.

While the court did not want to take away the rights to litigate to enforce a right, the applicants had been too hasty, she said, and then made the final order, that there would be no costs awarded.