When the story of our country is told to future generations, the heroic role played by Zakeria Mohammed Yacoob will, no doubt, occupy pride of place.
The anti-apartheid activist known to many today as Zak Yacoob was part of the team that represented many freedom fighters, including those accused of treason in Delmas. It was based on his contribution that former president Nelson Mandela appointed him a commissioner of the Independent Electoral Commission, along with Johann Kriegler and Dikgang Moseneke, to run the country's first constitutional elections in 1994. About four years later, Mandela appointed him to serve on the Constitutional Court.
So, Yacoob is steeped in our country's struggle for freedom but is also a respected - well, until this week - jurist who served our country at the highest level.
When Wits University conferred on him an honorary doctorate, he, expectedly and correctly, made the important point that freedoms are qualified by human dignity and equality.
It was with this glorious background in mind that we were appalled to discover that such a highly venerated individual could stoop so low in his abuse of our sports reporter Tiisetso Malepa.
Our reporter, following leads about the suspension of Cricket SA's acting CEO Kugandrie Govender, duly called Yacoob, who had been appointed interim chair of the board by sport minister Nathi Mthethwa. It turned out Govender had also been allegedly roughed up by Yacoob for not responding to an e-mail within 24 hours.
Yacoob didn't require much to descend into an arena of insults. Malepa, to his credit, simply asked questions and, with admirable emotional intelligence, kept calm even when the judge called him "a dishonest, irresponsible idiot. You're a rogue and dirty journalist." When Malepa persisted with his questions, Yacoob answered: "Where do you get that bullsh** from? Where do you get your idiotic notions from?"
How could one so moved to fight against the injustices of the past then become, in his due retirement, a vile, disrespectful perpetrator of such abuse? The expletives coming out of Yacoob's mouth were at odds with the Yacoob who told academics and students at Wits about the importance of limiting freedoms to ensure dignity and equality. When Yacoob said Malepa was a dirty journalist, what had happened to the activist and campaigner for dignity in him? What did he think of Malepa's own dignity? On what basis should he have been subjected to such abuse by one supposed lodestar for human rights and constitutionalism?
How could one so moved to fight against the injustices of the past then become, in his due retirement, a vile, disrespectful perpetrator of such abuse?
If the good judge thought Malepa didn't understand the issues and was following a wrong (as if there is a right) line of questioning, what happened to courteous disagreement?
As it turned out, Yacoob misunderstood how the media works. He wrongly believed that Malepa ought to have waited for press conferences and press statements before writing stories. This is akin to what the apartheid regime wanted: approved news. This is why the apartheid government banned newspapers, were comfortable with Naspers and an SABC that was created to be a lapdog when watchdogs were few. To imagine a freedom fighter and a human rights lawyer who, in 2021, behaved just like the goons of the regime that killed and terrorised our people beggars belief.
While we all must appreciate Yacoob's contribution to the struggle and his service in our courts, we must be unequivocal in repudiating him for his unseemly and unwarranted assault on the dignity of a journalist young enough to be his child.
Mthethwa was right to make sure this jurist with apartheid mentality was removed from our sport.
It can only serve the country better. It is a sad day indeed when a freedom fighter jurist exhibits, in so brazen a manner, traits of apartheid lords.
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