Establishing
a human rights-anchored Constitutional Democracy remains one of the unique
'freedom guaranteeing legacies the Mandela cohort of Parliamentarians,
leadership complex, and thinkers had bequeathed to posterity. The isolation of
each citizen into a human with rights protected and enshrined in the
Constitution has not only subjugated organs of state humanism in the
Constitution but also put the vices of legal practice in check.
The judgement of Jacob Zuma will go on in history for various reasons, with the blindfolded lady justice being the one to be questioned if she did not see the person in the human before her. The person of Jacob Zuma has been in the courts for days more than he had been to account in Parliament. His relationship with the law has been so troubled that Lady Justice might have developed an ability to sense him without using her eyes, which makes such blindfolded eyes symbolic and potentially meaningless.
True, he is in contempt of court; he should face the consequences of his contemptuous acts and thus attract the maximum allowable sentence for his actions. In facing the wrath of the law, the law should not fail to see him as a human for whom rights are written. Zuma, the human, might have been forgotten when the court gave access to his case to be heard when the law was clear that he should have been heard by courts dealing with matters of contempt.
It would seem the Constitutional Court saw
the person of Zuma violating it as a distinct court, not part of the court
system. Thus, it sought to deal with him on its own rather than allowing the
system to manage the contempt like any other contempt. The rationale that went
into justifying a departure from the maximum allowable sentence of 6 months to
15 months clutched at all straws of legal jargon to make it stick only to prove
Zuma, the person, was visible to Lady Justice, who was at the least supposed to
see Zuma, the person.
This was a sequel to Justice Japhta's
decision in the same court to direct Zuma to appear in the 'Zondo' Commission
with a Zuma-specific 'right to remain silent' and 'right to avoid answering
incriminating questions' calibrated to meet the particular demands expected of
Zuma, the person in the Commission's witness stand. What could also have been
on trial with Zuma in his contempt is the contempt by the 'functionaries' in
the judiciary of the 'ideals of impartial adjudication and the courageous
protection of (human) legal rights'. The pedestal created by the contestable
'public interest' and 'public good nature' of the judgement, including the need
to 'show the teeth of the judiciary' might have spilt over the face of Lady
Justice to see who was in the dock and not what was in the dock.
With the power to still define the
expressive functions of the law and establish new precedents for our
jurisprudence, the Constitutional Court should have allowed this case to be
heard at a lower court, thus allowing itself to be an appealing space for a
review of the judgement. As things stand, the system has a split judgement
whose basis may be suspect in respect of the extent to which it connotes
'emotional legal action' driven by feelings of a judiciary rattled by crises
surrounding its legitimacy if the Mkhwebane 'sealed-by-the-court' files do
indeed consist of members of the bench.
The temptation of the gallery occasioned
by expectations of a sanction by the various publics the South African state in
its entirety is accountable to might have also created not only a desire to
speak to the somewhat irritant statuses that Zuma the person occupies as he
traverses his contexts as a human with rights all are enjoying, but an
opportunity to be heard as members of the judiciary on matters at hand. The
judicial system might have been rescued or haemorrhaged by the judgement.
The questions that are optimised in our
nation, society, and politics are what we should expect of Jacob Zuma, given
the judgement, because it now exists.
1.
He
unfortunately has only one opportunity to show magnanimity by walking into jail
and saving the nation. The repercussions of his refusing and igniting chain of actions
that might define him and the judgement differently in history
2.
He
might have to trust the corrections system to process him in terms of its
prescripts. He is not a flight risk; he has no victims he might endanger, and
his prison might not necessarily mean a change of domicile save for symbolic
entry.
As far as the matrix of organs of state responsible for processing
him as a prisoner is concerned, the South African Criminal Justice System has
mechanisms to manage prisoners of his calibre. The correctional system has
classifications that will define him as a prisoner yet calibrate his form and
type of prisoner. The institutional committees will have to sit and consider a
sentence plan in the interest of South Africa. He has been convicted, and his
purpose is achieved; there are now more significant purposes.
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
🤷🏽♂️Be ngisho nje
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