LOWERING OUR BAR

Goodness me! I am not sure where I got this article from or in fact who wrote it - that said it shows a disturbing trend of late.

Perhaps it is time to step back and take stock of which direction it is that we are going in.

Lowering our Bar

South Africans stand back and passively watch the gravity-defying drop in public standards at our peril. One instance is the Judicial Service Commission’s decision to let off Cape Judge President John Hlophe with a slap on the wrist for conduct grossly unbecoming such a senior judge.

The JSC was set up in 1994 as a vital pillar of South Africa’s new democracy to uphold the standards of the judiciary and ensure the profession feeds individuals of the highest ability and moral fibre on to the Bench. It has lowered the bar by effectively accepting Hlophe’s claim that he received verbal permission for secret payments from a financial services company from a minister who had long left office by the time the payments rolled in.

It has lowered the bar further still by indulging a blatant conflict of interests, in which he granted the company’s application to sue a fellow judge while being on the same company’s payroll. Much the same applies to the deeply disturbing circumstances surrounding the suspension of prosecutions head Vusi Pikoli -- however much the Cabinet might insist that concerns about a constitutional crisis are overblown. This, too, symbolises a steady erosion of standards.

At issue is the independence of the prosecution authorities, as enshrined in law, and the constitutionally guaranteed separation of powers. The Ginwala Commission threatens this independence. It is led by a politician constrained by terms of reference which could imperil the conclusion of a vital Scorpions investigation into organised crime and public corruption.By trampling on the National Prosecuting Authority’s turf, the ANC government has dropped the high standards of institutional independence it is largely responsible for putting in place. Our concern for “standards” is not nostalgia for the previously advantaged old order. The standards we speak of are those that gained ascendancy in 1994 with the advent of democratic rule, which were set in stone in 1996 when the Constitution was enacted. In the racial fracas over Hlophe a simple fact has been buried.

It is a black-led establishment that set the standards it now threatens to drop. Lack of judgement? If Hlophe refuses to step down, the inevitable result will be a decline in judicial standards. By allowing his conduct to pass without sanction, the JSC will forfeit its moral authority to act against other judges who in future accept pay-offs or crash into walls after a tipple and then claim immunity because of their status.

The rule of law can work only if there are no untouchables. Sadly, the JSC voted by a small majority -- which included Chief Justice Pius Langa -- to let Hlophe off the hook in the teeth of damning evidence. And despite the fact that he has dragged the dignity of his office through the mud on many previous occasions. Transformation of the judiciary and the legal profession is a testing job that requires strong and principled leadership. Hlophe’s idea of providing this is to call an advocate in his division a “piece of white shit”.

In its actions the JSC and black advocates have been sucked in by the chimera­ of racial solidarity. The cause of transformation is best served by appointing black judicial officers who will uphold the highest professional and ethical standards and then holding them to account. That is true Africanism.

Player below par

Finally South Africa has done right by the Burmese people. It took the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, which dropped Gary Player from the Mandela Invitational golf tournament, one of the fund’s landmark fundraisers. This is because Player violated sanctions against Burma when he designed a golf course popular with the ruling junta and its putting generals. It was the right thing to do, given South Africa’s history and the manifold ways in which we benefited from international solidarity, which made the old order apparatchiks near-lepers in the decent world.

Unfortunately, the South African government has been less than forthright. Earlier this year we failed to use a Security Council seat to support a resolution against Burma, retreating instead into bureaucratic gobbledygook about why it was not the right forum. With a vicious junta, the foot-soldiers of which have felled monks and gunned down a photographer in the saffron uprising of recent weeks, every forum is the right forum.

South Africa claims it was trying to secure political gravitas for the newly formed UN Human Rights Committee. In fact it was trying to ensure that no precedent was set so that a similar resolution cannot be taken against Zimbabwe, that other blight on the global conscience. Thank goodness the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund has done the right thing and shown Player the South African way. As our correspondent noted last week, the Burmese people are looking to the people of Mandela to speak up for them.

Apparently deeply wounded at being dropped, Player trotted out a string of excuses, saying that at the time he designed the golf course it looked like the junta was relaxing its grip on power. He also hastened to assure us that he made no profit, but asked the developer to put the money towards creating jobs.

Player admires Mandela -- and he should therefore be able to see the obvious parallels between his hero and the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Would he seriously suggest that we rush off to build a theme park in Darfur because there is a ceasefire and peace talks are under way?