The independence of the judiciary has become a key issue after the NPA renewed charges against Jacob Zuma
The Congress of South African Trade Unions has the greatest respect for former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson and Mr George Bizos.
The two played a valuable role in the struggle for freedom. They made an important contribution to the drafting of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and we fully agree with them that the separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive is an essential cornerstone of our democracy.
Their concerns about the independence of the judiciary are, however, directed to the wrong door. Cosatu fully supports an independent judiciary and shares the jurists’ fears that it is under threat.
We believe, however, that they should not be criticising Cosatu but the people who are manipulating the judicial system for their own political ends. Cosatu would have liked to hear them express similar concerns on the following occasions:
- When the media revealed that the real reason for the suspension of the Director of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), Vusi Pikoli, was his issuing of a warrant for the search and arrest of Jackie Selebi; Cosatu made a call for a judicial inquiry to establish the truth of this, but the two jurists did not back this call;
- When the acting director of the NPA, Mokotedi Mpshe, confirmed that when President Mbeki gave him the job he instructed him to look into “this matter around Jackie Selebi”, then a week later told e.tv that “[The president] never mentioned the Selebi name to me”.
- When Mpshe was running up and down to judges to cancel the warrant, presumably on the instructions of the executive.
- When the Special Browse Mole Report came to light, indicating that some people in the NPA were hell-bent on throwing mud at the ANC President, Jacob Zuma, which the government at the time denied, and yet which now forms part of the charges against him.
- When the NPA spent seven years investigating Jacob Zuma before charging him.
- When the NPA and the media launched a media trial of Jacob Zuma, and effectively found him guilty in the court of public opinion, without any objection from the two jurists
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Chaskalson and Bizos’s deafening silence in the face of all these abuses of the legal process, and of an individual’s human rights, all of which posed a real threat to the independence of the judiciary, has undermined their credibility, and they have therefore lost the right to claim to be neutral on the issue.
This is an edited version of a statement released by Cosatu this week