Mogoeng too conservative for Constitutional Court

The appointment of a new Chief Justice for the Constitutional Court isn’t a topic that is very interesting to most South Africans... however it is something that we should all be concerned with, as it has important far-reaching consequences.

President Zuma has controversially nominated judge Mogoeng Mogoeng to take up the office of Chief Justice. Many experts have said that Mogoeng’s inexperience and conservative religious views make him an unsuitable candidate. Several of Moegeng’s judgements are deemed unsympathetic to women and to homosexuals. Commissioner Krish Govender has challenged Mogoeng over a reference he made to “minor injuries” suffered by a young girl when she was raped. “To me, you can’t have something as a minor injury when it comes to rape,” Govender said.  Mogoeng conceded under questioning by parliamentary delegate Koos van der Merwe that he had told a colleague that God wanted him to be South Africa’s next chief justice.

Gareth van Onselen writes that religion is everywhere in SA politics today, and increasingly it is coming to influence those public institutions and servants who should serve the public interest dispassionately and without fear or favour. When those beliefs run against the Bill of Rights (such as judge Mogoeng’s views on homosexuality) the results can be profound and far reaching, and to the detriment of our democracy. You might recall Zuma’s 2006 pronouncement that “same sex marriage is a disgrace to the nation and to God” - is his nomination of Mogoeng a consequence of this belief? Even our elections - the pinnacle of democratic free choice and individual agency - seems to have been reduced to nothing more than an exercise in carrying out God’s will. Very little is written on this subject. Most people are too scared to cause ‘offence’. But the Bill of Right demands much more than that. The line between church and state needs to be fiercely guarded and, at the moment, it is being torn down. As a result, religious prejudice, inconsistent with the Constitution, has found a home at the highest levels of the government and God is being used to instil fear in those who do not support a particular political agenda, all of which is to the detriment of our democracy.