The legal battle between the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) and former president Jacob Zuma has created a psyche of distrust in certain quarters, causing a myriad problems for the upcoming elections.
A recusal application brought by Zuma effectively renders Chief Justice Raymond Zondo a conflicted party, who pushed for his own desired outcome through a majority judgment that delivered a law-like imitation of justice.
It doesn’t logically follow that Zondo would act as a judge to hear a case about his own misconduct and a misjudgement of the justices of his ilk.
Truth be told, Zondo violated our everyday legal practice to undermine the significance of a hierarchy of the courts. A direct access to the Constitutional Court for a contempt of court dispute was a vindictive miscue with malice afterthought that yielded an overkill to misjudge Zuma out of blind hatred.
That’s a worst sin that a hearsay aberration concocted as admissible evidence to impeach former Western Cape judge president John Hlophe. It’s a kind of selective justice, if not a lack of divine finesse steeped in justice, which cost the nation an unspeakable loss of innocent lives and violent destruction of our democratic gains.
All this would remain an indelible stain to the anecdotes about the legacy of Zondo. Worse, the three wasted years of the State Capture Commission under Zondo culminated into a deliberate misdirection of the apex court to the point of misjudgement on account of dereliction of duty. It’s the very misjudgement that came back to haunt us, causing an albatross for the IEC.
That is beside the misdirection overlaid with irregularities stemming from prejudices imposed by judges to prove a point out of pride, without care of the consequences. Hence they should be equally impeached.
Morgan Phaahla, Ekurhuleni