The Senzo Meyiwa and Hillary Gardee criminal cases illustrate that our entire judicial or security cluster is in tatters. I can say something about these cases because I have been attending court on 21 separate cases since 2022. In one matter I am the complainant (assault GBH) and in another an applicant (eviction of illegal land occupiers) in another I was the accused (assault common) and in another the defendant (harassment).
All kinds of nonsense go on over there. And there is corruption also to multiply the problems. The whole thing is an inconvenient and expensive mess.
Presently EFF leader Julius Malema is in court on a matter that apparently started in 2018 and is nowhere near finality.
Malema in his usual caustic style, attacked the incompetence of the magistrate. Judges Matter, an NGO, says Malema attacked a magistrate without presenting his justification.
Malema has previously presented justification and continues to do so.
Malema makes clear that the same magistrate in his case has been repeatedly arriving late in court. On the day of judgment, the magistrate forgot the written judgment in her office and walked to court without the main instrument of the job at hand. She apparently sent a police officer to go pick up the judgment from her desk and it was indeed brought to her. The court was waiting for her to correct her mistake.
She did not bother to check if the documents delivered to her were in order before delivering the judgment, instead she stopped in the middle of her judgement to say two pages were missing and those had to be found and brought to her.
We know that in the Meyiwa matter the presiding officer was eventually discontinued, because of laxity.
Magistrates and judges, as well as detectives and prosecutors, do at times play fast and loose with several criminal cases. Thabo Bester and his girlfriend show us that the entire security and judicial cluster is a circus, with a profound lack of seriousness.
Malema is both rumbunctious and cantankerous, but sometimes he confronts evil head on. There are many who wish ill on him and in any confrontation, he is more likely to be the suspect. That is why the defenders of the magistrate Twanet Olivier have not bothered to check whether there is anything provocative that she may have done, that a healthy and robust South African would have objected to.
Malema makes clear accusations. Court records and witnesses can be examined to determine whether she forgot the judgment and whether she is forever late.
Malema had no business fiddling with any type of gun, toy or not, in public. He has many overly dramatic performances that annoy many. But that does not mean he must be subjected to irrational treatment.
Today former US president Donald Trump faces court cases and is on record as the president who won an election possibly with the help of the Russians around 2018. The US security establishment believes Russians interfered successfully with the US election, penetrating the US cyber security. Trump and his supporters, including a horde of evangelical Christians, believe Trump is being targeted by the ruling elites to thwart his political ambitions and the courts are being used to malign and disqualify him from retaking the American presidency from the weaklings and warmongers who run the US presently.
Elites in Western democracies do use the courts, even against each other, to achieve political objectives. The US courts are prosecuting Trump and
simultaneously trying to silence his criticism of the courts. This drama at the apex of Western democracy.
Even here in SA our security cluster generally has done many dubious things – the jury is still out on what benefit we got from the judges and Thuli Madonsela targeting of Jacob Zuma.
Clearly a faction of the ANC and a faction of the security cluster did not want Zuma in jail, and they successfully took him out of jail. He is out of jail even now, so what was that farce all about? More than 300 lower class civilians died because of a tiff among the upper classes? Somebody has egg on their face, the authors of the state capture commission.
Malema and many others like him are going to face massive lawfare and all efforts will be employed to take him to jail and or take him out of politics, one way or the other.
These things happen; ask Lula da Silva of Brazil.
- Swana is a political analyst, an academic and a member of the 70s Group
