Mail & Guardian Reporter
THE legal profession is set to be subjected to a special investigation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission later this year.
The commission’s head of research, Charles Villa-Vicencio, has confirmed it is planning to hold a special hearing into the legal system under apartheid. At the hearing it would invite submissions from various bodies, such as the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel).
The commission’s plans follow Desmond Tutu’s call last year for judges to come forward and testify at the commission. Several supreme court and Appellate Division judges currently on the Bench gave notorious pro-apartheid judgments.
Villa-Vicencio said if the plan went ahead, the truth body would assess the submissions and carry out its own research – the same formula applied for the special hearings into the health and media industries.
Nadel spokesman Krish Govender said he hoped the investigation would focus not only on the judiciary, but also on the behaviour of prosecutors, advocates and attorneys general. By way of example, he recalled one prosecutor who had a carboard panel on the wall in his office on which he used to chalk up, with a cut-out noose, the number of people he had sent to the gallows.
However, other attorneys, who asked to remain anonymous, questioned the tactic of singling out individual professions.