WeeklySA_AdminGAME CHANGER: Fallout over suspicious political motives leaves exclusive lawyers’ body badly bruised
With Sy Makaringe
WHEN the Pan African Bar Association of South Africa (PABASA) was established way back in 2018, it was hailed as a significant game changer in the legal fraternity in particular and our maturing democracy in general.
Its transformative agenda and commitment to the creation of an atmosphere of independence, professionalism and excellence within its ranks endeared itself to many prominent black legal practitioners, including legal luminaries such as Dumisa Ntsebenza, Nasreen Rajab-Budlender, Jabu Motepe and Muzi Sikhakhane, who joined it in their droves.
PABASA’s pledge to take up cases that “ameliorate the plight of the working class and vulnerable people” and its fight against the “vestiges of apartheid and colonialism … to give effect to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights” positioned it as an important instrument that would level the playing fields for people of all races to thrive and prosper in democratic South Africa.
But of late the eminent advocates in PABASA have been at loggerheads with one another over the suspicious manipulation of its processes by some of them to push or suit certain alleged political agendas.
However, the straw that broke the camel’s back surfaced when certain individuals within the bar started targeting Ratha Mokgoatlheng, the Senzo Meyiwa murder trial judge, for ridicule for his unwarranted and ill-advised criticism of black lawyers.
Also at the centre of the fallout were the sexual harassment allegations against Eastern Cape Judge President Selby Mbenenge, which are being investigated by the Judicial Conduct Tribunal, where Sikhakhane and Rajab-Budlender, both long-serving members of PABASA, are incidentally at the opposite ends of the saga.
With resignation letters, insults, accusations and counter-accusations flying left, right and centre across room, chaos in the bar is now said to have descended to a point where it has begun to resemble feuding in a real, noisy and smoke-filled bar in Mshenguville or Marabastad, where drunken patrons are often at each others’ throats over spilled beer or a two-timing girlfriend.
Are we good for another round, our dear learned friends?
GENDER IMBALANCE
OVER the seven years that it has been in existence, PABASA has prided itself on being a catalyst for change and transformation.
It has also proudly stated it is “unapologetically black and women-oriented”.
Women-oriented? Very interesting because the last time we checked, many members of the association – including senior counsel such as Dali Mpofu, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, Vuyani Ngalwana and many others – were men.
Men, especially those of the “learned friends” variety, must learn to choose their professional bodies wisely.
WHAT A HOLY MESS
NOT only must the advocates learn to choose their professional bodies wisely and correctly, they must also learn how and what to appropriately call them.
Take PABASA, the acronym of their name organisation’s name, for example.
PABASA sounds like the name of a vigilante group or a criminal gang in the same mould as PAGAD (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs), which wreaked havoc in the Cape Flats in Cape Town in the 1990s or MAKABASA, whose members terrorised Soweto residents in the late 1980s and early 1990, kidnapping girls from shebeens at night and hijacking cars.
Had the learned ones done simple and cost-effective desktop research, they would have discovered to their wisdom that PABÁSA is, according to Wikipedia, a Catholic ritual or devotion in the Philippines – popular during Holy Week – “involving the uninterrupted chanting of the Pasyón, an early 16th-century epic poem narrating the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ”.
The verses, the online encyclopedia says, are based on the Bible and practised every Holy Week.
As anyone can see, there is clearly nothing in common between the two PABASAs.
No wonder our learned friends’ organisation is in such a holy mess.
RIP SACP?
ABOUT a year ago, the SACP’s then freshly minted general secretary Solly Mapaila confidently told everyone who cared to listen that South Africa’s vanguard party wanted to go it alone politically as it was tired of riding on the coattails of the ANC, its tripartite alliance partner.
In other words, the party wanted to access the state trough on its own and not to feed on the few crumbs the ANC handed it.
Further gutted by the ANC’s decision to enter into nuptial arrangements with the DA, Freedom Front Plus and others following the May 2024 general elections, Mapaila said it was about time the party of Chris Hani and Joe Slovo contested for state power in South Africa.
Its death wish was granted, well, partially, earlier this week when it “contested for state power” in a by-election in Polokwane’s Ward 13, Julius Malema’s lair.
Despite the SACP’s pre-election hype and strong talk, results showed the contest was really a no contest. The party only managed to garner a measly 1% of the vote, compared with the EFF’s 57.34% and ANC’s 40%.
Despite this total annihilation, SACP Limpopo’s leader, Obed Thabana, said, without even batting an eyelid: “Our mission was to make a mark in the political arena of this country and we believe we have made a mark.”
But that is an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the SACP by the electorate and a total fail even by former Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga’s 30% pass threshold.
With such an atrocious electoral performance, SACP leaders would be doing themselves a big favour if they were to start looking for a grave marker now.
RIP AFRICAN BANK?
ANOTHER South African institution that is evidently at death’s door is, sadly, the African Bank.
A Limpopo widow winding up her late husband’s estate walked into the bank’s Giyani branch earlier this week with a letter from the Master of the High Court to request the financial services provider to check if the deceased had an account with it.
It is a simple process that, with other banks at least, takes a few seconds to execute as all that is required to extract the information is for the bank employee to punch in the deceased’s ID numbers into the computer and, pronto, the results are there for the client to see.
But at the African Bank, as the poor old widow found out, it does not work that way. One has to wait a day or two for the results to be made available as such information is processed only at uts head office in Johannesburg.
The African Bank must wake up to the reality that in the fast-paced, technology-driven world we live in today, sleeping at the wheel is not an option.
Even snails know that, in this fast-changing world, they either have to adapt, or die.
A LYING LIE DETECTOR
SUXOKA (isiXhosa for “Don’t Lie”) is a DStv-Mzansi Magic reality show that outs and shames liars, especially in relationships, through a polygraph test.
The popular show’s host, award-winning TV actor Motlatsi Mafatshe, always guarantees in each episode that the test’s results are “100% correct with no room for error.
But in the latest episode of the show’s current season, when the lie detector was tested on the question of whether a young woman had lied when she told the operator that she had not cheated on her partner, the polygraph produced a very strange answer. It stated that the result was “inconclusive”.
That was a patently big and fat blue lie. The correct answer was either that the girl had lied or had told the operator the truth. Period. There plainly could be no grey area or two ways about it.
Now, if a lie detector cannot distinguish between a lie and the truth, who or what on this earth will?
