“You tell me, as a newspaperman, why don’t you guys write about the fact that Tsvangirai is a sell-out?” asked my friend the other day.
I was stumped. I do not know for a fact whether Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai is indeed a sell-out or who he is selling out to.
Maybe other “newspapermen” will help clarify this question for the benefit of my friend and many other people who might share his view.
To my friend it is immaterial that Robert Mugabe lords it over an ever failing economy, is probably criminally guilty regarding the inhumane manner in which he ordered dwellings demolished in Operation Murambatsvina and has been in power for longer than Nelson Mandela was in jail.
This week Mugabe’s enforcers arrested the man who beat him in a presidential election. His crime: asking more people to vote for him in the run-off election caused by his not winning enough votes to be declared an outright winner.
But my friend urhabulile — he is politically conscious and has served his time in student and youth politics.
For him and many like him, the world can only be seen through a political prism, which is not a bad thing in itself.
But it is also a perspective that tends to believe every question levelled against a former comrade betrays the counter-revolutionary mind of the asker.
Choosing to read all events through a political paradigm is often the curse of those of us born unfree.
It is this tendency that clouds reasoning once we hear that a very senior black judge might be guilty of wrongdoing.
The reaction to what should happen to Cape Judge President John Hlophe is similar to the choice of not engaging Mugabe’s many faults, but rather to question the motives of his accusers.
An unnamed number of Constitutional Court judges say Hlophe attempted to influence them on how they should rule in the matters relating to ANC president Jacob Zuma.
Needless to say, Hlophe has not been found guilty of anything. Due process must take its course.
But as a believer in the transformation project, I expect Hlophe and Mugabe to mind their steps. They must stop and think about how their actions undermine the moral high ground of the courses they claim to champion.
I wish Mugabe could, for once, acknowledge that his obsession about Britain is misplaced. Rather he should dwell on what the Chimurenga heroes, such as Mbuya Nehanda, Sekuru Kaguyi and Josiah Tongogara, would think of his actions.
Similarly, Hlophe should worry less about the political opposition parties and those against transformation, and more about how his actions set a noble agenda backwards.
But, as things stand now, a transformed judiciary and a credible land redistribution programme lie compromised thanks to these two men.
Thanks to the two men, it is possible that some people associate transforming the judiciary with judges finding themselves in embarrassing professional positions all the time or land redistribution with being a form of crony capitalism.
Being black or having struggle credentials does not mean one owes Hlophe or Mugabe anything. It is the other way around, actually.
Hlophe has been in the news for the wrong reasons just too many times. And his accusers — or those who corroborate the allegations against him — have not always fitted the rather easy jacket of revisionists.
The allegation that he called a fellow judge a piece of white trash was never fully resolved. He invoked the alibi of a dead minister when asked who had given him permission to pursue private work that saw him end up giving his bosses permission to sue a fellow judge.
The court of public opinion has different standards to the one he sits in and will not acquit him that easily.
I fail to understand why Hlophe is such a hero for the transformation project.
He is not the only person in the judiciary to have taken part in the struggle. Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke spent his entire teenagehood on Robben Island after he was sentenced as a 15-year-old to 10 years’ imprisonment.
Chief Justice Pius Langa built a legal career representing political prisoners, civic bodies and trade unions. Yet they always conduct themselves with the probity befitting their office.
The two, like many other judges, have nothing to prove to Hlophe or his fans. If indeed Hlophe has struggle credentials, then he would know not to believe the nonsense about the “miracle nation”.
People killed and died so that people like him and Mugabe could walk around mouthing platitudes about transformation and imperialism. While I accept that we are all human and we all have issues we are not proud of, taking such centre stage in the history of our nations demands that they act with better discretion.
It is not enough to blame all the negative publicity on a “captured” media or on the great misfortune of the poor judge, misunderstood.
Mugabe and Hlophe owe it to the memories of the thousands who laid down their lives to remember that their positions were meant to give hope to the oppressed rather than the embarrassment they seem to have unlimited reservoirs of.
Those who believe in the correctness of why the struggle was waged must start isolating those who abuse the freedom they fought for — even if this coincides with the opinions and actions of their political opponents.
This struggle was never about showing up the revisionist white minority, it was about correcting a historical wrong. Spending time and energy preempting the actions of “imperialists” and “racists” is to misspend energy.
I have had enough of these two and others like them.
When I meet my friend again, I will probably be none the wiser about whether Tsvangirai is a traitor or not, or whether Hlophe is guilty of the things they say he did. But I will certainly know these two gentlemen are an embarrassment to a revolution a great many of us believe in.