Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Johnny de Lange is hard-working, thorough, clever and dedicated — but has a large ego and a short temper. So say those who have worked with him.
De Lange’s early life appears to have been fairly standard for a small-town Afrikaner male. Born in Eshowe in 1958, he attended Hoërskool Port Natal and Stellenbosch University, where he studied law, before doing national service.
After joining the Cape Town Bar as an advocate, he had a small and, according to former colleagues, relatively unsuccessful, legal practice in the mid-1980s.
De Lange refused to be interviewed this week, but on one version, it was the tumult of the state of emergency period that brought him into the African National Congress’s orbit. De Lange is said to have taken political cases in the Cape Town area, including those of former ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni and high-profile Umkhonto weSizwe trialist Ashley Forbes. After making a name for himself as a struggle lawyer, he became a constitutional negotiator for the ANC.
De Lange is an enigma in South African politics. He has no political constituency and is described by his enemies as rude, misogynistic and politically incorrect. Yet he is hugely popular among ordinary ANC members. His admirers say he is funny, charming and dedicated to his job.
He has a long-standing reputation as a bull in a china shop. He often lashes out — verbally at the judiciary or the media, and physically in the case of former National Party MP, Manie Schoeman, whom he punched in a famous incident in the House of Assembly.
”He is a bulldozer and he ploughs ahead, riding roughshod over whatever and whoever is in front of him,” a colleague said. ”He is clumsy and pugnacious, which makes him come across as a thug at times. He only knows one gear and that’s first, and he uses it for everything.”
De Lange has a bee in his bonnet (some say a chip on his shoulder) about South Africa’s judiciary. Three years ago, as chairperson of the National Assembly’s justice committee, he publicly attacked the judges as overpaid, lazy, unproductive and too white. When senior judges counter-attacked, he called them ”hysterical”.
Never one to back down in a quarrel, he has since spearheaded the drafting of controversial legislation designed to overhaul the administration of courts and structure of the justice system. Among other things, the laws would give the president a greater role in the appointment of top judges and introduce stricter controls on judges’ working hours and disciplinary procedures.
Said a former colleague who asked not to be named: ”He put it on the back burner, but he has never let go his desire to change the judiciary. He’s put a lot of thinking and preparation into his proposal and it’s not all bad — he just couched it in such a bad way.
”On this issue he is probably committing political suicide, but that’s Johnny. He doesn’t care if he is doing the politically correct thing or not — he just does what he believes is right.”
His reaction to the storm of criticism that met his proposals has been typically belligerent. When the media quoted criticism by unnamed judges, he accused them of fabrication. He recently told Parliament: ”I don’t trust the media; I don’t know if a real judge went to them and complained. On these people that are anonymous and hide behind secrecy, I really do not know who they are; I cannot tell you if they’re real. I know the vast majority of [media] articles are never checked up. Our comments are never asked on them.”
On the Bills, De Lange does appear to have overreached himself. After a national and international outcry, President Thabo Mbeki has ordered the shelving of key elements of the legislation.
This is not the only setback he has suffered. His bulldog personality has also brought him into conflict with his Minister, Brigitte Mabandla, who, in 2004, is said to have put him in his place in front of departmental officials. De Lange is rumoured to have considered resigning.
But on this he also has his defenders. Said another colleague: ”Mabandla does nothing and Johnny is a doer. He’s active and shows her up. He’s a bossy white male, he’s bright and busy. She resents the fact that he acts beyond his powers and reins him in, which must frustrate him terribly.”
In some quarters he is seen as playing to the ANC gallery. ”Because De Lange is a white Afrikaner, he doesn’t want to be seen as a liberal and he plays the radical card often and indiscriminately. He needs to show he is a loyal cadre,” said an acquaintance. ”Johnny takes his political cue from the radical elements within the ANC, and it does him no favours.”
But he has a surprising defender in the Democratic Alliance’s justice spokesperson, Sheila Camerer, who has worked with him for 10 years. Camerer said: ”At the beginning he was terrible and very aggressive; he made my life an absolute misery. You literally couldn’t open your mouth or he would shout you down. But I won him over. I once said that he comes across as a tiger, but actually he is a teddy bear. From then on, he was nice to me.”