‘I have enemies; I don’t know them’

The Mail & Guardian sat down with Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng after questions were sent to him about the functionality of the Constitutional Court and his absences from it as a result of international travel.

Mogoeng started the interview by raising the question of whether the M&G was part of a plot to discredit him and the judiciary.

Mogoeng said that, before the Judicial Service Commission interviews began in October, he had received a call from a colleague. “He said: ‘My brother, I’m calling, just as a brother. Just know that people are all out to discredit you.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said: ‘There are two professors who have either been assigned or have assumed the responsibility to write articles critical of you.’”

Mogoeng said the colleague mentioned an article in the Daily Maverick by a former law clerk at the Constitutional Court. He said there was likelihood of another article “relating to a range of issues including why the vacancies [at the court] have not been filled, and where you travel, the number of times you sit or don’t sit in court”.

“He said there are two senior politicians … and two judges involved in this saga. The M&G will be writing a story about you.”

Mogoeng went on to say: “I hope that I am not just here for you and your newspaper to pretend that you really want to hear my version, when it’s a done deal. And I get worried when I hear that there are suddenly a group of people all interested in ensuring that negative stories are out there about me.”

Asked who was out to get him, Mogoeng said: “You’ve got to operate on the understanding that you have enemies.

“I don’t know my enemies. Anybody who wants to run me down is my enemy and I don’t know them all. You may be one of them, I don’t know — and I don’t need to know, by the way. All I need to know is that I must never find myself in a position where I abuse my position, [or] I abuse state resources. I would rather that people seek to create a scandal out of the normal things that I do, because they couldn’t find anything ...

“Because when I respond, on whatever platform, I will be able to expose them.”

But Mogoeng said criticism was one of his favourite parts of his job. “It helps me grow. At the first meeting at Sanef [South African National Editors’ Forum] that they invited me to in 2012 after my appointment, one of the things I said to the editors was, ‘Thank you for having criticised me as harshly as you did because you helped me to appreciate the deeper capacity within me that I would not have otherwise connected with.’. I enjoy challenges, I enjoy it when there are problems and, together with my judicial or administrative team, we forge in and seek to address those challenges.”