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Goodbye Judge Mogoeng Mogoeng. You came, became, and left.

    As we celebrate the departure of Mogoeng Mogoeng as South Africa's Chief Justice, we do so being humbled by his commitment to Constitutional Democratic principles defining our legal system. He came, became, and left. The institution of the judiciary received him, and hosted him. He dwelled in it, it led him through its established precedents, and he in return created new precedents that are now no longer his. 

The institution had a date with and for him to leave it, and he has now left it. As an institution, the Judiciary will remember him as an institution he became inside it. His judgements will be the institutional leadership others will follow as he had followed those of others. The echoes in the Chambers of the Constitutional Court will reverberate to honour the walks he made in those halls. As the walls of our court of final instance bid him farewell, let it be known that outside those walls there are clear view fences around his legacy and space into posterity. 

Such is the beauty of life and nature. It continues to be itself as we enter and leave it. It serves all that live in it, and yet not all that live in it serve it. I think all of us couldn't wait for many of us to leave, for we knew nothing human is permanent except the indelible marks we leave, positive, negative, and/or otherwise.

Our forebears wrote into our Constitution emotions whose practical expression is what we are yet to really understand. They decreed our innate wish to always say goodbye to both good and bad in a way that leaves us continuing to fare well in our memories of the goodbyes we making. We are a nation that has already said goodbye to several Chief Justices, and yet continue to cite their judgements to shape our jurisprudence. 

We are also a nation that has said goodbye to several of its heads of the national executive, or Presidents, and continue to live with them. They done die inside our institutions, their terms end inside our living institutions. Such is the spirituality our institution has, and the tranquility of transition they bequeath on us as inheritors of the promise of posterity they guarantee.

Thank you Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng. What you could be, you became. Your deeds will venerate you.

🤷🏽‍♂️A ndzo ti khensela

🤷🏽‍♂️Be ngi bonga nje

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