The ANC and John Dugard: Feeding the hand it bites
As long ago as 1994 in our recent past, as John Dugard sat before the Judicial Service Commission to be interviewed for the position of Constitutional Court judge, two commissioners would pause proceedings that they might question Dugard's modesty; for his curriculum vitae, although extensive, did not in their eyes do sufficient justice to the colossal influence that was his contribution to South African jurisprudence. Such was the stature of the man at the dawn of our new democracy.
He was never appointed.
Some 18 years later and his achievements are now rightly described as magisterial. In those legal circles that matter, he is considered one of the fathers of human rights in South Africa. In our universities his books on international law are standard texts; in our precedent, his influence is as pervasive as it is defining; among the international legal community his standing is commanding and his opinions authorative.
A stalwart in the fight against apartheid, an architect of the South African constitution, founder of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, he has held positions at Princeton, Duke, Cambridge and Berkeley, served as a member of the UN International Law Commission, a judge ad hoc for the international court of justice and a special rapporteur to the UN Commission on Human Rights. His contribution to South African and international law alone has earned him honorary doctorates from six South African universities.
Truly he is a great jurist. And deliberately I have not qualified the term with ‘South African'. Yet, for all that, Dugard's contribution has never been fully recognised; certainly the forces that be, from Mandela through Mbeki, have done little more than demonstrate a certain disdain for the man. That is, until April last, when President Jacob Zuma saw fit to bestow upon him the National Order of Baobab, Gold Class. As a result, Dugard now enjoys the title: Supreme Counsellor of the Order of the Baobab, the highest status for which this particular order provides.