Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng entered the ring recently in a speech to the lobby group Advocates for Transformation. In its own way and style, the speech was extraordinary. Mogoeng did not content himself to note that there was a lively debate about the selection methods used by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) in nominations for judicial office or in the briefing patterns of attorneys in selecting counsel to appear before the court over which he presides.
He went much further than that. On one count, his speech contains no fewer than 16 references to unnamed "personalities and nongovernmental organisations … involved with an illegitimate neopolitical campaign to have certain people appointed" to the bench. He claims this is "a disguised protection of white male privilege".
In suggesting a conspiracy is at work from a shadowy, unnamed "grouping of (old order) key operators", who in Mogoeng’s opinion are posing as "agents for the enforcement of constitutional compliance when they are a change-resistant force", Mogoeng crosses several red lines.
He alludes, without elaboration, to a meeting he attended in London, where apparently "toxic inaccuracies" about our judicial selection methods were aired. Perhaps that is the trigger that caused his outrage. However, to then impugn the motives of the many critics of the JSC’s selection methods moves from the realm of sober defence into the far more dangerous territory of conspiracy-theorising and constructing a rigged trial, on flimsy evidence, to hang his detractors out to dry.
