EDITORIAL: Supreme court slowcoach
Should justices of the constitutional court be decisive and quick on their feet?
The wheels of justice are said to turn slowly, but not as slow, it seems, as in Bloemfontein, seat of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).
When Jacob Zuma’s trial was postponed this week — for the umpteenth time — the reason lay not with a doctor’s note or some bizarre legal argument dreamt up by his defence team, but in the lap of the judge president of the SCA, Mandisa Maya.
By the time Zuma’s trial was due to resume in the Pietermaritzburg high court on Tuesday, Maya was apparently still pondering an application from the former president. Her indecision, if that is what it was, and certainly her dilatoriness, led to the postponement. Zuma had applied to Maya to reconsider a decision by two of her judges who had rejected his application to bar Billy Downer from prosecuting him in Pietermaritzburg.
That was more than two months ago, and she has still not made up her mind. And to think such a slow coach almost became chief justice.