EDITORIAL: Ramaphosa nails it with Zondo move

We aren’t accustomed to the president doing the right thing — or to be more accurate, doing anything. This is why Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment of judge Raymond Zondo as chief justice was especially significant. Having kept his hand secret for so long, he has played a major card.

First, Ramaphosa has shown he will be advised, but not be dictated to, by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), which clearly overreached, politically at least, in the way it conducted the interviews of the candidates for chief justice and in its decision to recommend only one — judge Mandisa Maya. Indeed, the JSC’s endorsement of Maya was enthusiastic to the point of being undignified, which arguably ended up handicapping her chances of being appointed.

Second, the president displayed a degree of political nerve that many had concluded he didn’t possess. It would have been understandable if he had chosen someone else. He might have reasoned that Zondo would be perceived to have accumulated too much political baggage from his chairing of the state capture commission, and that would be good neither for the judge himself nor for the apex court. Yet if this was a factor for Ramaphosa, he discounted it — and he was prepared to risk political fallout (which has in fact been negligible). Hopefully, it’ll embolden him to take more risks.

Third, the Zondo appointment amounts to a presidential affirmation of the findings of his eponymous commission. Ramaphosa knew very well he had a choice not to appoint Zondo. Many expected him not to. But the fact that he did so represents a very deliberate and significant shift of Ramaphosa’s political weight.

On a practical level, the president might reasonably have argued that Zondo, the deputy chief justice, had spent years away from the bench running the commission and was therefore out of touch with the apex court, other senior courts, and the administration of justice in general. If anything, several expert observers of the JSC process noted that Zondo did seem out of the various judicial loops and didn’t interview particularly well – certainly not as well as judge Dunstan Mlambo. But if this was a consideration, it was clearly outweighed by the other, more significant, considerations.

Ramaphosa shrewdly deflected any suggestion of gender bias by saying he would nominate Maya as deputy chief justice to replace Zondo. Of course, no president is bound to appoint a deputy to the top position, so Maya can’t be regarded as an heir apparent. In any case that decision could be many years, and numerous political battles, away.

There will be a lot of cleaning up of the judiciary for Zondo to do. But the rottenest element of the entire judicial system is the JSC itself. As chief justice, Zondo is constitutionally the chair of the JSC, and it is there that he needs to focus his energy.

The allocation of constituencies in the JSC, in theory, makes it representative of the legal professions and of parliament, and technically immune to being a political creature. In practice, that immunity has proved fragile, and has been shattered by the disgraceful ad hominem tactics of some (Dali Mpofu and Julius Malema, take a bow), which was effectively condoned by weak chairmanship.

Of all state bodies, the JSC’s behaviour should be dignified and measured, showing a collective respect for the standing of senior legal professionals that appear before it. The hijacking of the JSC by politicians should end; it should deal with miscreant judges who seem untouchable; and it must counter the inescapable conclusion that it is actively hostile to appointing white men as judges.

Was this Ramaphosa standing up at last? If so, let’s hope he doesn’t sit down any time soon.