There’s an adage that says members of the justice system shouldn’t be political and speak out publicly on matters that are the purview of the legislative branch or get involved in ideological left v right political battles. Members of the judiciary should stick to matters that pertain to the law. It’s not an adage that is uniquely South African but one that is universally agreed upon tradition in most democracies.
But when someone attacks your profession and justice system you have sworn to uphold, as veteran ANC member and Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu did this past week in a scathing opinion piece criticising the SA constitution and our judges, you might feel you have a right to speak up and defend yourself as acting chief justice Raymond Zondo did.
Legal journalist Karyn Maughan argues this very point (for subscribers) and writes that there are well times when judges should remain silent and refrain from commenting on matters that could lead to them being viewed as interfering. But Sisulu’s attack is not one of those times and Maughan writes how former chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng faced a similar decision back in 2015 when he decided to meet with then-president Jacob Zuma about recent verbal attacks on the judiciary from then ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe and former police minister Nathi Nhleko.
Mantashe had accused the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria and the Western Cape High Court of having a “negative attitude towards government” while Nhleko said that some judges had taken bribes without producing any evidence to support his claims.
Zondo had every right to defend himself and the sterling work SA’s judicial members have had to do over the past decade when often they have been the last guardrails defending our constitutional democracy.
Since the opinion piece came out, Sisulu has written follow-ups, one ‘contextualising’ her original piece on IOL, and another article in response to ANC veteran Mavuso Msimang’s Daily Maverick piece that called Sisulu’s writing “gibberish”.
It seems that in the response to Msimang’s article, Sisulu may have copied as much as 12% of her article from a speech UK attorney-general Dominic Grieve made in 2013.
News24 ran the speech through plagiarism detection website Turnitin (for subscribers) after Business Day columnist Gareth van Onselen noticed the similarities to Grieve’s speech.
The bit from Grieve is the largest portion of the plagiarism but further word-for-word copying was found throughout her piece and in the end, around 23% of her response to Msimang was plagiarised from other sources.
If this is Sisulu’s play for the ANC presidency, it’s gotten off to a rather horrendous start.
Here’s a roundup of interesting opinions, analyses, and editorials:
EUSEBIUS MCKAISER: Don’t fall for tactics of fans of underachieving ANC politicians who try to distract us – Business Day
TOM EATON | Sisulu calling a critic intellectually lazy is a classic case of pot and kettle – Sunday Times Daily (for subscribers)
ANTHONY BUTLER: Why we should pay attention to Sisulu’s ambitions – Business Day (for subscribers)
The Sisulu-Zondo ‘discussion’ and why the democratic dispensation failed the people of South Africa – Daily Maverick
Lindiwe Sisulu furore a microcosm of the battle lines being drawn in a fractured ANC – Daily Maverick
Tinyiko Maluleke | Zondo Commission report… loading. And so what? – News24 (for subscribers)
Image: GCIS
