EDITORIAL: Time to raise the ethics bar

Our parliament is cursed with political parties that appear indifferent to the integrity and behaviour of the members they send to serve. Still, the seventh parliament has an opportunity to elevate the ethical standards expected of its members. 

Last Friday, former public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane made patently racist remarks against an Indian high court judge who ruled against her. She claimed, without providing any proof, that South Africans of Indian descent had contributed adversely to her short-lived career as public defender.

In part, this was a reference to the evidence leader in her impeachment hearings and the judge who ruled against her last Thursday. Mkhwebane, who has suffered a series of costly legal defeats in SA  courts, had approached the Supreme Court of Appeal to have her impeachment set aside.

In delivering the judgment on behalf of a unanimous bench, justice Visvanathan Ponnan remarked that her case was so weak that it was dead on arrival. He went further to comment on how her counsel had done disservice to her case.

In her intemperate response, Mkhwebane played the race card. To say it was unfortunate that she invoked race into the matter would be to condone her conduct. Her remarks were plainly racist, and constitute conduct unbecoming of an MP — certainly from one who, a few months ago, was supposed to be the last line of defence against maladministration for South Africans.

Unfortunately her party, the EFF, is unlikely to rebuke her and ask her to retract the offensive comments.

Judges, especially SA ones, are generally thick-skinned. Justice Ponnan is unlikely to sue Mkhwebane. But this is no reason for judges to be subjected to racial abuse for merely doing their work.

Mkhwebane is lucky to live in a constitutional democracy. She has many legal avenues to pursue her grievances, which she should exhaust instead of resorting to baseless attacks on judges.

Mkhwebane is not alone in calling into question the quality of the MPs deployed by parties to represent them in the legislature. The ANC, EFF and Jacob Zuma’s Mkhonto weSizwe (MK) party are guilty of the same charge.

The MK’s parliamentary leader, John Hlophe, the impeached Western Cape high court judge president, is still hoping that he will be allowed to serve on the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), the body that interviews and recommends judges for appointment. This is despite the fact that the same JSC recommended his impeachment.

Like Mkhwebane, he too will use the courts they treat with disdain to pursue his appeal to overturn his impeachment and to be allowed to serve on the JSC.

The courts are there to adjudicate disputes between citizens and institutions. However, their rolls are burdened with political cases that should not be a priority like Hlophe’s.

If parliament had stringent criteria for people who aspire to be MPs, we would not be here. As well as disqualifying prospective MPs who have criminal convictions — and jail terms of more than a year — it should be harder for impeached judges and heads of chapter nine institutions to make it to the National Assembly.

At the very least, the ethics committee, parliament’s ethics watchdog, should haul Mkhwebane before it for her racist remarks. In the long term, parliament needs to raise the ethics bar it holds its MPs to. This would relieve our courts of political cases.