MOGOENG NOT BAD, JUST TAINTED
The retiring chief justice will always carry the ghost of former president Jacob Zuma with him
Chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng ended his 10 years as the head of our judiciary on Monday. He has now ridden off into the sunset to opine on God, vaccines, the love and lure of filthy lucre and other matters that interest him. Was he a good chief justice? Was he a terrible one?
Legal experts will be writing screeds about his tenure. This ordinary citizen can only say he was a pleasant surprise. He was certainly not as terrible, as partisan, as unprepared or as lightweight as many of us feared when he was appointed back in 2011. Indeed, when he was good, Mogoeng was very good. Remember that fantastic judgment in which the Constitutional Court held that the remedial action taken by the public protector against then president Jacob Zuma regarding the disgraceful and illegal “security upgrades” at his Nkandla home was binding?
Yet there is one aspect to the Mogoeng tenure that will remain a stain on our country. This aspect has, overtly, nothing to do with Mogoeng himself, but the factional, divisive, small-minded man who chose him for the role — Zuma. It was with Mogoeng’s appointment that we saw just how factions of the ruling party can undermine and perhaps even potentially destroy our country and our democracy.
Mogoeng was installed after the ANC was cleaved in two in the run-up to its 2007 elective conference, at which Zuma won the party presidency. In the aftermath, strategic positions across state-owned enterprises and the civil service were filled with “our people” by Zuma and his triumphant supporters.
Renowned jurist and freedom fighter Dikgang Moseneke was considered a shoo-in for the chief justice position. The razor-sharp Moseneke was, however, too independent-minded for the sheep-like judiciary that Zuma sought. Moseneke had innocently remarked at his 60th birthday party in 2008 that he wanted to work towards an equal society.
“I chose this job very carefully,” he had said. “I have another 10 to 12 years on the bench, and I want to use my energy to help create an equal society. It’s not what the ANC wants or what the delegates want; it is about what is good for our people.”
So Zuma ghosted him and shopped around for his “own person”.
This is the tragedy of factionalism and cadre deployment. We ignore the best among us while (and here I am not commenting on Mogoeng in particular) we choose the absolute ignoramuses who will destroy whatever institution we hand to them because they are “our people”.
Think about the devastation of the Zuma years. In every single instance a Zuma person — without qualification or any suitability for the job — was introduced at an entity and promptly destroyed it. Berning Ntlemeza turned the Hawks into a weak, toothless organisation whose sole purpose was to target political opponents. At the SABC a person with fake qualifications was brought in to lead the board. A Zuma lackey drove SAA, the national airline, into business rescue.
These are just a few examples of how we destroy our country through these factionalised decisions. The results are everywhere for us to see. Municipalities have collapsed because clueless, factional appointees have been elevated to high office.
Our infrastructure is collapsing. Why? We choose our puppy dogs over many other qualified, hard-working people simply because they are not in our faction, or our race, or our tribe.
We will pay a heavy price for this. Indeed, just consider what we have lost over the past 10 years. Anyone who has listened to Moseneke speak, now or in the past, will tell you that we lost one of the great minds of our times. Moseneke’s fine and supple brain, his vitality, his fidelity to the powerless and the poor, would have animated our constitutional understanding to a level that would have touched humanity across the globe.
It is a tragedy that Zuma snubbed him and ignored several other respected jurists to nominate Mogoeng. His being selected by a factional man, into a factionalised environment, robs us of the ability to properly assess Mogoeng. Zuma destroyed a lot, including those he placed in their positions, because now they carry his factional taint. Mogoeng’s legacy will forever be intertwined with that of the constitutional delinquent who appointed him.
His being selected by a factional man, into a factionalised environment, robs us of the ability to assess him properly