Writer’s law of detraction

SA’s self-appointed constitutional law Yoda, Pierre de Vos, rhetorically asks if former National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) prosecutor Gerrie Nel has “exchanged his rock star job for nothing”. While I’m not qualified to argue the legal side, I think De Vos is missing the point of Nel’s activism. Any principled person who cares knows there often comes a time when one says: “I can’t do this anymore, I‘m out of here”. Tenured academics who pretty much do as they want and have most of the day to themselves may not understand this. But I’ve felt it. People in bad work and personal relationships have felt it.

Business Day’s articles, and especially its editorial, stated it clearly: “Star prosecutor Gerrie Nel’s actions reflect a sense the National Prosecuting Authority is just not doing its job”, and the NPA is engaging in “selective prosecutions”. Numerous commentators have said it is almost inevitable that prosecutions will be privatised because of the dysfunction of the NPA and it being captured by politics.

De Vos looks at the situation playing out at the NPA and in SA from a narrow, academic view and through his dislike of AfriForum. He reminds me of jokes US late-night television hosts are making about President Donald Trump’s nomination to the US Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch — Gorsuch is such a strict constitutionalist he would have no problem with slavery and would equate electricity to witchcraft.

Look, Nel is obviously gatvol but believes he can still make a difference. Being a talented lawyer, having won actual cases (not the student moot courts De Vos may argue in), he must know the legal implications of private prosecutions and doesn’t need advice.

Nel could have become another high-price lawyer for hire or a teacher like De Vos. You know, “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches”. But he didn’t, for which we should be very thankful.

Thomas Johnson Cape Town