Farewell to a great citizen

MOST PEOPLE who met Dikgang Moseneke when he was deputy chief justice said the same thing.

He’s a serious man. His mood is like midnight breathing. Even casual words were precisely chosen.

His suite of judgments reflected a rapid mind influenced only by the 27 commandments of the constitution.

He answered calls. He considered questions in his busy day. He wrote personal responses to journalists’ pieces.

Perhaps it’s because so many of us in the media had got used to too many government and party officials treating us as if it wasn’t their job to talk to us, or talking to us only if they could extract some private value out of it, that it seemed so clear.

Moseneke has always been a gentleman, whose patriotic spirit never disintegrated. And so, there were many stories to consider as the country bade farewell to him being at the Constitutional Court, with one of the most moving being how he was admitted to the bar as an advocate of the Supreme Court 20 years after he was found guilty of sabotage – in the same room.

Moseneke was a mere 15 years old when sentenced to a term on Robben Island, making him one of the youngest political prisoners incarcerated there.

That was just one of the many reasons why there was certain pain when, in 2011, Moseneke was not promoted to chief justice, and the decision by President Jacob Zuma to instead nominate Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng was interpreted in some circles as vengeance against Moseneke, who, it might have seemed, had refused to show bias towards to the ANC.

As it happens, Justice Mogoeng has since significantly proved his mettle, and when he praised his colleague on Friday as “a legal giant”, the nation applauded.

Moseneke will surely be sorely missed.