PRESS STATEMENT BY CONCERNED ADVOCATES
8 February 2022
IN DEFENCE OF ONE OF OUR OWN
We the undermentioned advocates respond formally to Mr Adriaan Basson’s insults against Dali Mpofu SC as follows:
On 7 February 2022 Mr Adriaan Basson. Editor-in-Chief of News 24 published an article in which he sought not merely to differ with our senior colleague, Dali Mpofu SC, but also sought to pour upon him gratuitous insults that in our view betray the all-too-common colonial attitude of whiteness towards Africans in general, and more recently, towards African professionals in particular.
We consider the article an irresponsible attack on a legal practitioner performing his constitutional duties. The Judicial Service Commission performs a constitutional duty and it is in that context that we must view his contribution.
If Basson is so committed to polite language as he claims, his point and even criticism of the process or Mpofu and Malema, could be done without resorting to narcissistic insults. Basson chooses to refer to Mpofu as “a scoundrel, immoral and a nincompoop”. Of course, the term nincompoop is drawn from the Latin phrase “non compos mentis”, which means a person not of right mind. Really?
We note the racial undertones in his attack and find it an outrage that in his desire to differ with Mpofu SC, he resorts to gratuitous insults and slurs, whose roots are clearly what he (Basson) inherits from his colonial racist heritage that settled on our shores to rape, to plunder, to exploit, to maim and to colonize. He naturally sees Mpofu, the same way the colonial forefathers saw an African: an immoral, depraved and irrational being, whose race is so inferior it deserves the master’s sharp tongue and reprimand.
Basson could well differ with Mpofu SC, and he is entitled to do so, but we take exception to the seeming colonial logic that informs the insults he throws at him. What inspires the insults? It comes from the same people, who, not so long-ago lynched Minister Lindiwe Sisulu when she expressed a world view that does not coincide with theirs. Clearly, like some among us, Basson is unhappy with the outcome of the JSC interviews for the position of Chief Justice. Save to state that we respect each and every candidate that appeared before the JSC recently, we make no comments about the process because that is not the focus of our statement.
Basson employs the old device made popular by whiteness when insulting us. In the hope that they, like his minions, crave white approval, he draws a line between Mpofu on the one hand and the likes of Semenya, Ntsebeza and Mtshaulana on the other. How patronizing. How cheap. Ntsebeza, Semenya and Mtshaulana can never join him as he insults one of their own. He, typically, as the superior one, arrogates upon himself the knowledge of what Mpofu and Malema had in their minds.
It is ironic that Basson descends to gratuitous insults in order to challenge what he views as insulting and unfair to certain candidates. Many like Basson are just unhappy that an African woman, Justice Maya, was recommended and have conjured up a plethora of excuses and feeble legal argument to justify what is at best their displeasure or at worst, their prejudice. Ironically, it is they, the self-appointed super democrats, and not Mpofu, who are inspired by misogyny. We will defend both Mpofu and Justice Maya and we consider it a national disgrace that after 27 years of almost five male Chief Justices since the democratic breakthrough, there is opposition disguised as constitutionalism, to a recommendation we should all celebrate.
We must expose the mindset that inspires these insults and state categorically that we will not tolerate them because they are what Africans have endured for centuries since white settlers set their oppressive, thieving, murderous and exploitative foot on our shores.
To the extent that we may be dealing with embedded journalism, we may be dealing with journalists who are actually embedded with interests that have always sought to direct South Africa towards a neo-liberal reality, and away from the goal of creating a society that is the antithesis of apartheid colonialism. No white legal practitioner, no matter what crook or rapist they represent has ever been attacked or insulted by the likes of Basson and his ilk. They reserve their attacks for African professionals because they arrogate to themselves the role of superior to Africans, whom they see as sub-human.
One of the things betrayed by the racist attitude in Basson’s article is the extent to which social, political and economic reality is dominated by another reality – the fact that whiteness has become South Africa’s new majority, whose world view, and ways of being have become the dominant reality in our neo-apartheid state. The agenda is to make sure that the interests of the new cultural majority are imposed, enforced, promoted and maintained .
One of the ways in which this happens is through the imposition of an echo-chamber, which, in the main, is governed by a cannon of rational opinion, and anything that falls outside this cannon is base, immoral and irrational, and anything that falls outside this cannon is as barbaric as what the white colonizer imagined the African to be. This is a logic of whiteness which is the offspring of coloniality, a logic that is governed by the belief that those who are not white are not as human as those who are, and it is therefore not immoral to visit upon them the barbarism of colonialism and apartheid.
It is actually in defense of this barbarism, which today exists as neo-apartheid that people like Basson can, with no sense of irony, engage in the double-standard we see in his article. At the centre of this bigoted tendency is the arrogance of whiteness, an arrogance that seeks to keep the land, the economy, the rule of law and the legal profession in the control of white people. Furthermore, this is a tendency that is borne out of the arrogance of some among us, who have arrogated to themselves the position of super democrats who are the high priests and priestesses, masters, guardians and custodians of modernity, democracy and constitutionalism.
Only through what their world view and what they imagine to be democratic does democracy exist. Anything that resides outside their imagination and does not coincide with their pi notions of democracy is undemocratic, and those who dare challenge their illusory and self-serving notions of democracy are the barbarians at the gate. One of the challenges facing South Africa today is a network of whiteness, propagated through the mainstream media, which transcends ideology, parties and political interests. In many ways, it even transcends race, in so far as some of its allies are people who are on the periphery of whiteness, but through assimilation into its culture, have become adept at mimicking its disdain towards blackness, its grammar and superior tone and have therefore become its useful idiots.
We are outraged by the language used by Basson against Mpofu and understand that it represents, not only his bigoted attitude towards Mpofu, but also his inherited prejudice against African people. His language and insults are part of the culture reserved for black professionals. No white professional, no matter how uncultured, has had to endure the kind of insults Basson and his ilk direct at black professionals and black people in general.
Basson occupies a very important media space and should use that space more sensitively than to propagate his own insults towards Mpofu. We ask Basson to reconsider, not his views, because he is entitled to them, but the painful import of his insults against Mpofu, and by extension, against all of us.
We call on Basson, News 24 and all the NGO’s of super democrats and certain sections of the media to be more responsible in their natural instinct to dislike African people. This racist campaign and political vendetta against Mpofu and other senior African advocates is unhelpful for our country. It detracts from the real mission of creating a truly free society for Africans in the land of their birth.
We know how it feels to face the wrath and organized persecution by an army of journalists and commentators as they consistently pour scorn on all of us. We expect the attacks that will come our way as a result of this statement and call upon all progressive structures in the legal profession like AFT, BLA, PABASA and NADEL to join us in defending ourselves against this racist onslaught.
End
ISSUED AND SUPPORTED BY:
MUZI SIKHAKHANE SC
DUMISA NTSEBEZA SC
JOE NALANE SC
THABANI MASUKU SC
ELIZABETH BALOYI-MERE SC
MAHLAPE SELLO SC
NOMGCOBO JIBA
MBETANA MALOBOLA
MENZI SIMELANE
NQABA BUTHELEZI
NKOMOTANA MOTSEPE
MPATI QOFA
MPILO SIKHAKHANE
SKHUMBUZO NHANTSI
BRIGHT SHABALALA
NDUMISO XULU
MXOLISI ZONDO
XOLISWA SIBEKO
TINY SEBOKO
LWAZI MTSHIZO
Enquiries
Dumisa Ntsebeza SC
Muzi Sikhakhane SC
Lizzy Baloyi – Mere SC
