I was Judge Willie Hartzenberg’s clerk for almost the entire duration of the Wouter Basson case. That being said, I must point out that I am writing this letter without the knowledge of Judge Hartzenberg. I have no affiliation to any sphere of the political spectrum, I am not a Basson groupie and do not intend to get mileage out of this letter. The views below are my own and should in no way be interpreted as being shared by the judge or by anybody else. I do not make the statements below for the benefit of right-wing whites who feel that some point has been proven through the Basson judgement. What I write is merely the first-hand experience of someone who was intimately involved in the case.
How does one start explaining what happened in the Basson case, when the record is 30 000 pages long, the documentary evidence twice as much and hundreds of legal arguments muddle all of it for the spectator? There is no way that can be done in a letter such as this.
I suppose that the most basic way of explaining the shock of the judgement is that when it turns out to be the exact opposite of what people expect there is always disbelief. When the public believes that Basson is guilty, no verdict to the contrary will satisfy the feeling of justice denied. But a judge’s duty in a criminal case is to evaluate whether an accused is guilty of the charges laid against him beyond reasonable doubt, and he may only make such an evaluation in terms of the evidence before him.
This is exactly what Judge Hartzenberg did in the Basson trial. In his judgement, the reasons why the evidence was insufficient are discussed separately with every charge. I suppose he could have let himself be influenced by public opinion; it would most certainly have saved him from being demonised as a racist judge who does damage to justice and law in South Africa.
Judge Hartzenberg is a man of the highest professional integrity who simply did his job. I am sure other judges who are reading this will agree it was most certainly not an easy job, given the length of the trial and the political undertones of it. He was not biased, nor did he prejudge the case. He simply did his job, judged the evidence and made a decision based on the evidence alone.
My appeal to the public is therefore to please spare a thought for a man who is being crucified for being a responsible judge. He is a good man who does not deserve uninformed recriminations from the public, never mind how angry they might be. Zach Louw