Chief justice tackles attacks on judges
Chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng called a media conference on Friday to again address what can only be seen as another attack on the judiciary, even though he is not yet ready to call it that.
Chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng called a media conference on Friday to again address what can only be seen as another attack on the judiciary, even though he is not yet ready to call it that.
Mogoeng called on nameless and faceless accusers of corruption in the judiciary to start providing evidence for their claims, as “gratuitous allegations of corruption can only delegitimise the judiciary and imperil our constitutional democracy”.
His choice of words underscores the severity of the situation. The judiciary, after all, needs the public to trust it.
It was not the first time Mogoeng has had to address accusations levelled at the judiciary. Given the turbulent political times, it will likely not be the last.
It was the judiciary that was the last line of defence during the so-called state capture years, and it seemed almost expected that the aim would once again be trained on the protectors of the constitution.
In 2015, after the courts ordered that now ousted Sudanese president Omar alBashir should not be allowed to leave SA pending another court case, there were cries of judicial overreach from within the ANC and the alliance.
Four years later, the attacks from politicians are still a reality.
But unlike in the past, those making the most serious accusations are now hiding behind nameless Twitter accounts sharing “information” that judges were paid by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s CR17 campaign.
Those paid, according to the Twitter campaign, were the national director of public prosecutions Shamila Batohi, who has been tasked with cleaning
up the National Prosecuting Authority, and judges who have ruled against public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, the EFF and Jacob Zuma.
The format of the so-called list was crude a screen-grab with typed dates and amounts allegedly paid to five judges and Batohi. It went viral. But, given the lack of any evidence behind it, it was given little oxygen.
Mogoeng still decided to address this for a simple reason
perception. “Perceptions need to be countered, particularly when they are serious and they have serious consequences,” Mogoeng said on Friday after the briefing.
He also wanted the police to find out who “the real forces” are behind the Twitter accounts, as “only a sworn enemy of our constitutional democracy would make allegations so grave against the judiciary without the evidence to back them up”.
Asked whether he thought it was part of the so-called fightback campaign against those opposed to state capture, Mogoeng told Business Day he could not speculate.
Somadoda Fikeni, a political analyst from Unisa, agreed with Mogoeng that the impact of the information being spread might lead “to the delegitimisation of the very last arm [of the state] which was otherwise the last line of defence”.
That “may actually lead to the delegitimisation of the constitution itself”, Fikeni warned.
In terms of the validity of the information being spread on social media, Lawson Naidoo, executive secretary of the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution, said he believed most sensible people would realise it was clearly fake news, as the screen-grabs were “obviously manufactured”.