Does anyone remember a time when lawyers occupied an affectionate place in the heart of society, rather than their more recent bleak outhouse? Even members of the legal fraternity seem to buy into the stereotype of the vulpine lawyer.
When noted Twitter lawyer and sometime dabbler in constitutional affairs Pierre de Vos addressed a tweet to “non-lawyers”, I quipped, with mock indignation: “Hey! We don’t call you non-human.” He responded by Âjoking that I should be grateful he did not call me a lawyer.
Just some mild badinage, and if anyone can make The Law look like an honourable and worthy profession it is battlers like De Vos. But it did get me wondering about the way the litigant in the street must be thinking about lawyers, especially in the light of the vigorous public criticism levelled at Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng last week.
We have precious little faith in the justice system as it is, for various reasons, and not all of them made up to satisfy particular prejudices we choose to hold. A Sapa story in The Star this week pointed to this prejudice, with a headline that seemed absurd.
“Prison term seen as negative experience for priest’s killer.” Excuse me? All those words are in English, but strung together like that they make no sense.
Is a prison experience supposed to be a positive experience? I’m all for rehabilitation, but I draw the line at dancing girls.
The inappropriately named Ayatolla Matseke, lawyer for — and I like this bit — a self-confessed killer of a priest, is calling for a sentence of house arrest. Prison, he says, would impact negatively on the young man. The real Ayatollah would laugh uproariously at that. In mitigation, argues the lawyer, his client only shot the priest because — I have to quote this in full — “he was afraid after seeing a man standing in a dark room while they were ransacking the house”. Poor lamb.
The Star carried another story which imbued me with nostalgia for my home town. The Cape Bar Council is calling for a disciplinary hearing against advocate Nehemiah Ballem, who told a judge in open court: “Jou ma se poes, man! Fuck you!” Apparently, in this racist world, we Capetonians are not allowed to use our culturally sanctioned version of “I object, M’lud.” Indeed, colonialism is still strong. But I reckon he will get away with it. In mitigation, according to Ballem, he was drunk at the time.
I do not want to daub all lawyers with the same wig powder. Nor do I want to argue against attempting to rehabilitate offenders, especially given the vast inequalities inherent to our society. But compared to some of the rank-and-file carriers, Mogoeng is starting to look pretty competent.
This is a column, so I’m allowed to deduce from the apocryphal, but even our hard news stories are starting to suggest it is time to move on to apoplexy.
Follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisRoperZA