By: Clyde Ramalaine
The African Church Father St. Augustine reminded us long ago, “Hope is a mother of two daughters: one is ANGER and the other Courage. Anger on what’s happening in your country: and courage to do something about it.” There is no record in at least our modern post-statutory Apartheid context of any opinion piece penned that has attracted such input and response. The name Lindiwe Sisulu has been trending for the last 14 days, unmatched by any other opinion piece or thought from Mzansi. What cannot be disputed is that her article wholly eclipsed the lame January 8 Statement and became the de facto statement. It is hallowed as a resounding success for any political strategy since her opinion piece upstaged Ramaphosa’s ANC – January 8 Statement. It got a nation talking and equally points to our polarized society.
It appears in any debate that there will always be at least four groups defining those who participate, irrespective of education or non-educated, more so the data-loaded privileged chattering class. In the first instance, those get stuck on the peripheral matters of speculations and innuendo. Secondly, those who only raise ad hominem often vitriolic baseless hate for comment. Third, those who have never read the piece yet have a second opinion because their favourite persona is against the author. Finally, a tiny minority attempts to hear the author in her own words. Sisulu’s article again emphasized and exposed my quadruplet of the aforementioned groups since we have them all on show. Being an academic or learned in any sphere does not exempt one from escaping any of the groups I herewith have identified.
The aggregate responses to Lindiwe Sisulu’s article, particularly those who took the time to pen or participate in an interview, thus cannot escape their own muddled and often shallow waters if not trapped state of interest, be that at individual or group base. Rumours of the Daily Maverick enlisting several academics to pen opinion pieces against Lindiwe Sisulu specifically fly around. Hence it is not strange that the aggregate of responses carried by this news platform attests to a hegemony of a constructed agenda with a specific aim at play. The Daily Maverick is entitled to host a particular agenda. Of course, it is allowed to associate with a particular group even to be factional – all it cannot claim is that it stands for an objective platform if the aforementioned defines its base.
This musing will seek to do three things firstly, and it will contend the responses in the blatant critique of Sisulu as perhaps inconsistent, not sustainable, thus hypocrisy. Second, it will engage the actions of both Zondo and Yacoob in public Television presence on the issue. It will lastly contend those who are insulted by the colonized minds of judges or anyone in power as fallacious and self-serving. In the end, it will argue that Sisulu warrants no retracting of anything she had said in her maiden article since those who shout insult, hurt, and attack are somewhat ambivalent as to when they choose to see it as insulting, hurtful, and attacking.
The hypocrisy of red-carding Sisulu is shown nowhere more glaringly than when opposition party DA leader Helen Zille as late as October 2021, on the eve of the most recent 2021 Municipal elections, dared to accuse the supreme court directly, better understood in our constitutional setting as the Constitutional Court, as an entity complicit to unethical behaviour. Helen Zille tweeted: The ANC’s withdrawal from the Electoral Court indicates that they have been tipped off that the IEC’s application to postpone the election was successful. If information is leaking from the Concourt to the ANC, it is nothing short of a Constitutional crisis.”
While she later claimed to have been speculating, it is a given that she in this one tweet categorically accused the Judges of the final court of arbitration [Constitutional court] as corrupt, unethical, compromised for being in cahoots with the African National Congress to have informed the ANC of its to be expected outcomes, hence the ANC’s withdrawal of its application. Zille thus categorically claimed the ANC withdrew its application because it was privy to information leaked to the ANC by the Constitutional Court. This was a direct and unambiguous assault and accusation with evidencing an instance.
DCJ Zondo, who was already from July 2021 moonlighting as caretaker of the judiciary, saw absolutely nothing wrong with this levelled accusation from a politician. Zondo saw no need to let South Africa know how hurtful, insulting and spurious these claims were. He did not say that a senior politician who served as premier to one morning get up without any evidence or research and analysis to tweet this was highly irresponsible. He demanded no retraction and offered to solution for this situation. He saw no need to round up a group of judges to express a group position. A second example details the ongoing treatment, and disrespect Judge President Hlophe continues to suffer at the hand of, among others, the patron of FUL Justice Kriegler. Kriegler’s whose endless verbatim views on Hlophe, a serving very senior judge, is as follows: Will we be silent as John Hlophe presides over an unethical charade? This is a direct accusation of a retired judge against his colleague and member of the serving judiciary. Notwithstanding allegations, did Kriegler exercise his constitutional right to an opinion? Did Hlophe have any right to feel abused and aggrieved, and insulted?
In another salvo of now known childish and self-serving tantrums, Kriegler, who, according to some, is justified in his abuse of Hlophe in 2021, sought to intimate Hlophe incapable of executing his proper function for being complicit to a corrupt group of people that includes Bongo whom the media long ago as part of the Zuma people declared persona- non grata. We heard Barnabas Xulu, legal representative of Justice Hlophe, responding to Kriegler, “It is reported in the news media that on March 1, 2021, Justice Kriegler issued yet another such statement, where he is reported to have said, among other things, that Judge President Hlophe had delivered a ‘patently dishonest judgment’ in the matter of State v Bongo over which Judge President Hlophe had presided. The statements attributed to Justice Kriegler are serious, deliberate, and disparaging of a sitting judge for having decided for the execution of his judicial functions.”
Was the judiciary as functionary not under siege in this instance, was this not a direct assault on the judiciary, or is it a case of horses for courses? I cite these two examples of the cases as real live recent experiences. Instances, the judiciary at the hand of a politician Helen Zille and former Constitutional Court Justice Kriegler where the bench was savagely attacked. Yet none of these passed for any flared conversation. The common denominator it appears is the whiteness of Zille and Kriegler, who is accepted to exercise their constitutional rights in cocooned white privilege, a privilege Lindiwe Sisulu as a black female will never share in. In. this context, I am compelled to ask those who released statements and shouted red-card and even fired Sisulu where were they when those mentioned above occurred? Did the cause for which they now stand loud momentarily and intermittently escaped them as the obligation of conscience for Justice’s pursuit measurable in rightful rebuke.
These direct insults and egregious claims for some strange reason did not stir any comment from all the lusty foundations Ahmed Kathrada Foundation (increasingly an extension of the factional Derek Hanekom divisive politics), CASAC, the jaundiced exception of choice subject of interest CASAC, the dated and often silent on pertinent black land ownership and economic transformation for blacks, Helen Suzman, the entitled and racist superiority complex Kriegler led FUL to necessitate no response. The aforementioned high-heeled foundations that are quick to grab the high towers of morality and sensibility often glaringly naked in inconsistency whose interest in societal change is creatively limited to never ask for land reform, radical socio-economic transformation, or the issue of blatant racism as we saw with the `July 2021 racist attacks by some Indians on Africans in which hundreds died.
Zille’s undeniable accusation of the CC judges and Kriegler’s perpetual sick attacks on Hlophe as unethical wholly escaped the self-appointed custodians some ANC politicians [I still do not know who told many of them they are stalwarts] and hired academics of the fragile Constitution and timid judiciary constitution ANC. Why did president Ramaphosa who undoubtedly presides over an unaccountable government and state, not remind us that we must protect the judiciary and Constitution against these attacks?
Why did Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola and those who aided him in expressing his opinion not write open letters to Helen Zille and retired Justice Kriegler? In fact, why did Firoz Cachalia, who tells us Sisulu makes him sick [as if anyone cares what makes him ill or not], not summarily take issue with Kriegler and Zille for their categoric assertions as it relates to that the CC is a compromised organisation open for political players to abuse it for their agendas? Why did Zimbabwean-born Elinor Sisulu, the wife of Max Sisulu, not pen her piece of discomfort with these attacks on the judiciary as a threat to the Constitution? Let us ask why did Mr. Constitution Pierre de Vos or any of the Daily Maverick enlisted academics engage this – is this not awkward or strange? May we know if the silence of the self-appointed guardians of the fragile Constitution and the timid judiciary do not challenge Kriegler or Helen Zille? Is it because they are white and entitled to their opinions as privileged? Why did former COSATU leader and brief deputy SG of the ANC now financially dry–cleaned billionaire Cheryl Carolus not call for any reprimand of Helen Zille or Kriegler? This from where I sit attests to all the trimmings of the sponsored factional agenda shows at play. Why is this not hypocrisy?
