A bad week for Julius Malema

A good week

For a while at the Judicial Service Commission hearings last week, Dunstan Mlambo might have felt he was suffering a new court experience: that of the kangaroo. The Gauteng judge president was subjected to "rumours" of sexual harassment allegations of which he had been cleared — and which were shown to be baseless — years ago. While his candidacy for chief justice, for which he would have been well suited, may now lie in tatters thanks to the slander, Mlambo retained his dignity throughout this character assassination. The same can hardly be said of the commission.

A bad week

While we’re still here, a screaming match with justice minister Ronald Lamola is barely the lowlight of EFF leader Julius Malema’s behaviour this past week, and yet another instructive example of how unfit this unashamed fascist is to hold anything approaching high office. Malema’s verbal spew — from his xenophobia to his racism to his disregard for the institutions that keep societies functioning — is poisoning SA’s civic discourse. It should be a matter of deep shame for any of the party’s more sentient voters, the handful of them that may still exist, not to mention its funders, that they continue to back such a troll.