Monthly Archives: March 2021

CJ Mogoeng and his foot-in-mouth

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It can’t be argued that we didn’t know what we were getting when President Zuma decided to appoint Mogoeng as the CJ of South Africa. Mogoeng was apparently already well-known among the judiciary for his strong religious beliefs, and he certainly didn’t hide his position during his public interview.

I have, in fact, been a supporter of the CJ since he was appointed. He is, however, off the mark on Israel, and his pronouncements on the COVID vaccine were bizarre, to say the list. 

While I have no quarrel with his strong religious beliefs, after all, as he himself asserts, this is guaranteed in the best constitution in the world, I have a problem with his naïveté. On the one hand, he allows himself to be used by the Israeli lobby, while on the other he espouses cultish beliefs. This wouldn’t matter much from an ordinary person or a minor leader, but to be coming from the CJ of the country, especially while acting in his official capacity, is problematic.

Although he has opted to challenge the sanction of the JCC on his Israel pronouncements, he would do himself a great deal of good if he simply apologised and moved on.

Mthokozisi Ntumba: Stop arming police during peaceful civil protests!

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Numerous times police actions during civil protests have resulted in deaths or serious injuries on the part of protesting citizens and bystanders. Surely, enough is enough?!

A number of points need to be made in addressing this issue.

First, our police are clearly sadly untransformed, despite having Black leadership. Black leadership seemingly will never guarantee transformation, as long as the police tactics, methodologies and tools are the same as they were under Apartheid.

Second, clearly our police don’t have a clue about dealing with peaceful civil demonstrations. Under Apartheid, the then government and their police force didn’t care for Black demonstrators, because for them they were the ‘enemy’ (as wrong as that thinking was). Using armed force, therefore, seemed ‘justified’, and in any case they didn’t care about the loss of Black lives or well-being. Human rights were non-existent.

In a democracy, however, that dichotomy doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. Moreover, the role of the police is not just to protect property, but more importantly to protect the lives and well-being of citizens, both the protesters and non-protesters. Participating in a protest doesn’t suddenly remove or reduce one’s constitutional rights; in fact, the very act of peaceful protest is protected by the constitution. 

However, coming armed to a protest clearly belies this. It appears that our police view Black demonstrators in similar fashion as happened under Apartheid, as the ‘enemy’. It appears the default position of the police is always to come to a protest to ‘kick-ass’.

It is high time for the government and parliament to take drastic steps to create a new policing paradigm fit for a human rights culture. This includes retraining the police command, but also more critically, ensuring that police deployed to a civil protest are never ever armed, not even with rubber bullets.