Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya
FOR the last week South Africa has been basking in the glow of the Constitutional Court judgment that found that President Jacob Zuma had violated his oath of office.
Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng and Public Protector Thuli Madonsela have become the poster boy and girl for constitutionalism and the rule of law.
What must equally strongly emerge from the judgment is how easily we in the media and the general population fall for the hype and other people’s agendas.
The media must take greater responsibility here because society relies on it to provide thought leadership platforms and to interrogate issues the proverbial man in the street does not have the time, tools or licence to probe.
Truth be told, the media and all other detractors had no business questioning Justice Mogoeng’s abilities, especially because most of the criticism was not based on his jurisprudence. It will never be good enough reason to criticise a judge because you disagree or dislike their religious beliefs.
The most that can be said about the criticism was that Justice Mogoeng was unknown to many and the time-honoured judicial principle of seniority in selecting judges was not followed, and if it had his deputy, Dikgang Moseneke, ought to have cracked the nod.
There was no link between accepting that Deputy Chief Justice Moseneke was snubbed and coming to the conclusion Justice Mogoeng was a bad choice.
The unintended consequences of the judgment must therefore be that the media and society in general reflect on the haste in which we come to conclusions about people’s probity based on nothing but hunches and hot air.
That Justice Mogoeng has emerged as the hero of the piece is not because he has improved as a judge, but rather because people are often too quick to jump to conclusions.
It says more about his detractors than it does about the chief justice.
If his detractors were honest with themselves, they would ask themselves what it was that they based their misgivings on and be careful.
The excitement over the judgment and the almost exclusive mention of Justice Mogoeng can easily make one mistakenly think the ruling was the work of one wise man rather than a unanimous ruling of 11 eminent jurists.
Justice Mogoeng delivered the judgment because it could not be sung by a choir and not because it was his own. With the exception of a minority, and dissenting judgments, Constitutional Court judgments reflect a collective wisdom of the judges.
The outpouring of emotion over Justice Mogoeng by the media in particular smacks of a grudging admission that it was wrong to have thought what it did about the man who would be chief justice.
Even if Justice Mogoeng was a lousy judge, the Constitutional Court structure of having 11 judges means there is very little a bad or politically beholden judge can achieve on their own.
Politicians would have to staff the Bench with at least six lackeys for their political agenda to be fulfilled ahead of the rule of law.
Having painted the picture that Justice Mogoeng was a buffoon because he has strong religious beliefs, the media is now shown up for having rushed to a conclusion without properly reflecting on the issues at hand.
There is even a tacit suggestion that had Justice Mogoeng not been given the tough time he was by the media and by the Judicial Services Commission, he would not have been the type of jurist he is.
There are just too many instances when any new person appointed to a post is accused of being a lackey.
In many instances, if that person has links to the ANC, it is regarded as a fait accompli that the only reason they are there is because of their political connections.
In Durban, for example, the taxi-owning Gcaba family, who have been in the taxi and transport businesses for decades, have to field accusations that they owe their wealth to their being related to President Zuma.
This is despite friend and foe knowing that the family was wealthy and controversial long before FW de Klerk thought of unbanning political parties.
I am in no way suggesting that the family are a group of saints or sinners. I am saying the probe into either can be done without unnecessarily referencing their Zuma connection, especially because we know their emergence precedes Zuma’s.
Like President Zuma said about his own shortcomings relating to the Nkandla malfeasance, the media and society must also say “with hindsight, there are many matters that could have been handled differently and which should never have been allowed to drag on this long, which we deeply regret”.
We too must be bold and humble enough to say to the chief justice, we were wrong to question your integrity and competence. For that we are sorry.