Haikona Motata…

Quote of the week

Universal adult suffrage on a common voters roll is one of the foundational values of our entire constitutional order. The achievement of the franchise has historically been important both for the acquisition of the rights of full and effective citizenship by all South Africans regardless of race, and for the accomplishment of an all-embracing nationhood. The universality of the franchise is important not only for nationhood and democracy. The vote of each and every citizen is a badge of dignity and of personhood. Quite literally, it says that everybody counts. In a country of great disparities of wealth and power it declares that whoever we are, whether rich or poor, exalted or disgraced, we all belong to the same democratic South African nation; that our destinies are intertwined in a single interactive polity.

Justice Albie Sachs
August and Another v Electoral Commission and Others (CCT8/99) [1999] ZACC 3

PREVIOUS QUOTES OF THE WEEK

1 March 2007

There was a mixed reaction to my comments here and here about Justice Motata’s appearance on Tuesday in chambers rather than in open court. While some emails lauded me for the harsh tone of my remarks, others argued that the prosecutor, Nazeer Cassim SC (degrees not obtained in Bulgaria, I presume), did not do anything that was illegal.

I do not want – and may not be competent – to argue about the question whether the action was legally acceptable or not. My point was that those involved should have acted according to the tenets of the Rule of Law, which requires an acceptance that we are all equal before the law and should not be treated differently because we happen to be rich and (at least in their own eyes) important.

Judge Motata evaded his constitutional and ethical responsibility – as a servant of the Constitution – to face the music. He most probably expected and demanded special treatment and was afforded such treatment, sending a signal that all are not equal before the law.

The response of critics also seems to be part of an emerging trend in public discourse according to which we are told that we are not allowed to judge public figures unless we can prove that they have broken the law and had committed a crime.

Thus Mr Jacob Zuma is “innocent until proven guilty” and we can therefore not ask awkward questions about why he took more than 1 million Rand from a convicted fraudster and then did favours for him in return while lying about it in Parliament.

Thus Commissioner Jackie Selebi admits that he is good friends “finish en klaar” with a person arrested for murder and we are told we must first prove he is corrupt before we start blaming him for nothing – how very dare we! Never mind that Mr Selebi has never denied the allegations that the accused had bought him expensive clothes and made some other payments to him.

There is a long list of such incidents where, in an Orwelian twist, those caught with their pants down are cast as the victims and those who ask the difficult questions about their nakedness are cast as the villians.

It is time that we eradicate the term “innocent until proven guilty” from the political discourse and reserve it exclusively for sparce use in the courtroom in criminal trails. It is used out of context to protect scoundrels and crooks and to demonise those who do not want to stop asking the questions that must be asked to help safeguard our democracy.

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