When our politicians fail us, only our judges can save the day
THE good justices have listened patiently and with admirable fortitude to the pleadings of counsel from both sides and have retired to consider the evidence, opinions and interpretations proffered. The nation awaits.
On the lips of Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng will hang the fate of the nation. It is the biggest irony of our time that the man picked to be President Jacob Zuma’s ultimate guarantor of survival could be the one who plunges in the dagger to end his career. For Zuma, it would be a fate worse than Thuli Madonsela.
When Mogoeng was surprisingly plucked from obscurity to head the Constitutional Court, he seemed to fit the Zuma playbook: Zuma had once again found the perfect stooge who would gratefully do his bidding.
The Nkandla judgment — the forceful language and the forthrightness with which it was delivered — proved that Mogoeng was nobody’s bag carrier. There can be no bigger fish to fry than the president of the country. Mogoeng delivered. He confounded the sceptics. It may sound patronising, but he’s come of age. Nobody questions his integrity anymore. His credibility is gold-plated.
Now he’s been called upon once again to adjudicate on our president — he who errs with gay abandon.
One lawyer acquaintance of mine thinks the honourable justices might accede to the motion to hold a secret ballot in parliament on the no-confidence vote. Another thinks the court might be gatvol with our delinquent president and might decide to “fix” him once and for all.
Judges aren’t supposed to be ruled by emotions. They park their feelings at the door, we’re told. However, to paraphrase Sojourner Truth, ain’t they human?
The court may also be aware of the accusations and self-serving innuendo about judicial overreach uttered by people who frankly don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s code for judges to keep their noses out of politics.
The Zuma arm of the ANC, which at times looks and sounds no different from a Zulu impi, this week marched menacingly to the High Court in Durban, ostensibly to protest against Judge Bashier Vally’s decision in the High Court in Pretoria that Zuma hand over reasons for his recent cabinet reshuffle to the DA.
It’s a dangerous game they’re playing. The judiciary should not be used as a political football or scapegoat.
Intimidation of the judiciary belongs in dictatorships. If Zuma took his job as president seriously, he would call off his dogs. If the politicians were doing their job properly, judges would not be involved in resolving political disputes. Judges don’t interfere; more often than not, they’ve been invited into these skirmishes.
As Dali Mpofu, for the United Demo- cratic Movement, pointed out in his submission on Monday, the Constitutional Court is not interfering. It’s simply doing its job. It’s what it’s there for. Its raison d’etre. Constitutional matters are its province, its mandate. It is the court of last resort. It provides legal clarity and finality.
But we’re where we are because Zuma has been allowed, almost given licence, to loot at will.
US political activist and writer Paul Loeb puts it brilliantly, and I’m shamelessly quoting him at length.
“If you run a lootocracy,” he says, “you have no conception of sufficiency. You set up the rules to grab as much money as you can, as if you’ve won a supermarket shopping spree. You also concentrate power, the better to arrange the world for your benefit. Unchecked by modesty, satiety or shame, you take all you can get away with. You loot until someone stops you.”
South Africa is a supermarket or bazaar with unlimited rewards. Some people won’t stop bingeing until somebody stops them. What’s happening at Eskom, for instance, shouldn’t shock you. It’s part of the orgy in the bazaar.
The irony is that layers of institutions were painstakingly created at the beginning of our democracy in an attempt to avoid just such debauchery. It’s all been in vain, thus far.
But it’s at party level where democracy has been seriously undermined. It is the very instrument of democracy that has been used to erode it. Zuma, for instance, has been able to turn the ANC into a powerful tool to shield his wrongdoing. The entire party has been reduced to a collection of spineless lickspittles — men and women who either enable such lawlessness and corruption, or suffer in silence.
One wonders how such people are able to deal with the inevitable awkward questions at family gatherings, church services or even the local shebeen. More importantly, how can they live with themselves?
The Constitutional Court is thus called upon to find ways of accommodating the cowardice of mainly ANC MPs.
An environment has to be created in which these parliamentarians are able to vote their conscience. They clearly don’t have the courage to match their convictions. They can only do so hidden from the disapproving attention of their bosses.
But the rot has to stop. If nobody else will, maybe it’s time for the Constitutional Court to step in.