Judges must lay down the law on full disclosure of all these inquiries

print head : Judges must lay down the law on full disclosure of all these inquiries

It’s become tediously predictable for the government to appoint a commission of inquiry each time it’s in a sticky situation. And the intention is not always to find a solution, but to delay and distract,  or take the sting out of the issue. It’s a surprise there hasn’t been one yet into potholes or load-shedding or the many other problems the government seems utterly incapable of solving.

Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi is the latest to get in on the act, appointing retired  judge Sisi Khampepe this week to head a commission into the horrific fire in Johannesburg in which 77 people died. He didn’t have to. A casual stroll through the so-called world-class African city would have alerted him to the dangers of many such buildings.

Or he could have had a word with some of his comrades who seem to have figured out what the cause was. With the air still thick with the smell of burnt flesh, minister of social development Lindiwe Zulu stood before the cameras to tell reporters, who nodded vigorously as if in agreement, that apartheid was to blame. It was responsible for the inferno that incinerated all these people. This dastardly system was still ruling from the grave.

Zulu’s colleague, minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, also chimed in. She pointed a finger at NGOs. They won’t allow the government to clean up the rot in the inner city.

One can only throw up one’s hands in despair. No introspection. No accountability. Everybody is to blame but themselves. Even President Cyril Ramaphosa popped in for a photo op, after which his mind seemed to wander off to more important things.  He waxed lyrical about his party’s chances in next year’s elections because, he said, South Africa under the ANC is a much better place than it was under apartheid. All one can say is, tell that to the people who perished in that fire. Even if it were true, was the aftermath of the inferno the right time to say it?

Our president has a way of rubbing salt into wounds with that customary smirk on his face. We’re so accustomed to human suffering that we don’t care anymore. We hop from one tragedy to the next in a heartbeat

Our president has a way of rubbing salt into gaping wounds with that customary smirk on his face. I suppose we’re so accustomed to human suffering that we don’t care anymore. We hop from one tragedy to the next in a heartbeat. But this one required us to pause and reflect. The agony of being burnt alive, scores of victims crushed together with no way out, doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s the definition of hell on earth.

And spare a thought for the  relatives who had to scrutinise the charred bodies as they tried to identify their loved ones. In any other country, the president would have taken the lead in officially recognising the solemnity of the moment. Flags would have flown at half-mast and a  mourning period would have been declared.

A casual stroll through the so-called world-class African city would have alerted him to the dangers of many such buildings

But South Africa is not a normal country. It is overrun by marauding gangsters, political and criminal, who  feed off each other. The political mafia not only enables the lawlessness of the common criminals, it benefits from it. 

And the politicians are the more treacherous because, given the untrammelled power they wield, they conduct the orchestra. They’re archetypal wolves in sheep’s clothing. They present themselves as good Samaritans, here to  tend to our wounds, but then inflict even more pain and suffering.

Incompetence kills. It is fatal. The people who died in that fire, and numerous others before them, are victims of a government not only corrupt but out of its depth. And, like useful idiots, the judges are then called upon in an attempt to shroud the ineptitude with a veneer of respectability.

It’s all but tantamount to a coverup. At worst, the judges are  conniving in undermining the judiciary. They should, at the very least, insist that their participation be conditional on their reports being promptly released to the public, and without alteration. Otherwise they have no business toiling for months or even years gathering evidence for reports that will  gather dust in some bureaucrat’s cupboard. A political charlatan like Lesufi should not have the power to appoint an esteemed former justice of the Constitutional Court to waste her time preparing a report that probably won’t even see the light of day.

This week Ramaphosa announced, to no-one’s surprise, that only the executive summary of another report by a retired judge — the investigation into the Lady R, the Russian vessel that docked at Simon’s Town in December — would be published. The rest of it would remain under wraps, apparently for security reason. If you believe anything this man says, good luck to you.

When this controversy first exploded thanks to US ambassador Reuben Brigety, Ramaphosa  implored everybody to reserve judgment until the judge had done his work. Now we’re supposed to take his word for it that the judge generally gave the government a clean bill of health.

Ramaphosa can’t be trusted to tell the truth. In manipulating the judiciary, he’s taken a leaf from the National Party’s book. It used to pack the courts with yes-men who would do its bidding. And “security” was always the justification for hushing things up.

Until judge Anton Mostert angrily stormed out of a meeting with the then prime minister, PW Botha, in Pretoria and promptly released his findings into the information scandal, or Muldergate, to an eager public. The scandal, which claimed the scalp of president John Vorster among others and changed the course of South African history, was chicken-feed compared with the wholesale thievery of recent years.

The judiciary should jealously guard its independence. It should refuse to be used by small men to cover up their nefarious deeds. Judges who agree to head inquiries should insist the reports are released to the public. The judiciary serves a cause bigger — and more noble — than the government: democracy. Our judges are its guardians, and it behoves them to insist on openness and accountability.