Durban – The ANC Provincial Executive Committee in KwaZulu-Natal yesterday lashed out at Chief Justice Raymond Zondo for “reckless utterances” made when he delivered the OR Tambo Memorial Lecture at the University of Fort Hare.
In his address on Friday, Justice Zondo said the failure of the ANC national executive committee to recall former president Jacob Zuma earlier than it did had cost South Africa billions of rand which were taken out of the country.
He also criticised some of the leaders in the ANC, saying they did not deserve to be associated with party stalwart OR Tambo as they had prioritised their own needs at the expense of citizens.
ANC provincial secretary Bheki Mtolo yesterday said Justice Zondo had disregarded the separation of powers principle between the executive, judicial and legislative branches of the state.
“It is becoming very clear that Justice Zondo views himself as above everybody else in our country.
“He is a referee, a player, a goalkeeper and an assistant referee. All in one, a Jack of all trades.
“He has now descended to nothing else but a pure political charlatan that must be exposed for his true intentions. Maybe the time has come for us as the nation to ask if South Africa is not facing a judicial capture because that would be the worst kind of state capture in our democracy.”
Mtolo said Justice Zondo’s comments meant that he had “now mobilised the whole judiciary against the African National Congress. He has ceased to be an impartial adjudicator on matters involving the ANC”.
“It was not only strange but reckless for the chief justice to use OR Tambo – who was a politician and an ANC stalwart – to attack other ANC leaders and the party itself.
“We do understand that all South Africans have political views, but the chief justice should know better.”
Mtolo said Justice Zondo’s public criticism of the members of the ANC in the National Assembly in particular had given rise to tension between the judiciary and the legislature.
“To this end, it is clear that our Parliament will never get impartial treatment from the Constitutional Court because the chief justice holds a strong view that members of Parliament of the majority party are not good enough to hold such positions.
“He needs to be stopped and be exposed that he is a politician playing opposition.”
The Office of the Chief Justice had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
On Friday, Justice Zondo, who chaired the state capture commission, said that the ANC delayed parliamentary inquiries and defeated motions of no confidence against Zuma.
“The majority party in Parliament, which includes executive members of the National Assembly, referred the institution of parliamentary inquiries, which would have revealed, at the very early stage, serious evidence of state capture before a lot of taxpayer money could be stolen by the Guptas.
“They said that investigations should be conducted by law-enforcement agencies that they knew were unlikely to reveal anything or that in any event would take years to complete investigations while the Guptas and Mr Zuma were continuing with their state capture projects to the detriment of the people of South Africa,” he said.
Justice Zondo said corruption by some ANC leaders had reversed the gains of democracy.
“The journey that we have travelled as a country from 1994, and we look at where we are, there are many things that we see every day that are the opposite of what these leaders sacrificed for.
“Some of the people who are behind state capture and corruption are people who themselves sacrificed a lot in order to ensure that apartheid was defeated, but they don’t have the kind of values that OR Tambo had. Some of them want to make sure that they and their families eat first.
“They have no shame that they knew Tambo personally and that, wherever he is with people like Mandela, they would turn in their graves when they see whatever they are doing,” Justice Zondo said.
Jacob Zuma Foundation spokesperson Mzwanele Manyi could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.
THE MERCURY
