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Pan Macmillan South Africa - Dikgang Moseneke

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255 pages

English

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In My Own Liberator, Dikgang Moseneke pays homage to the many people and places that have helped to define and shape him. In tracing his ancestry, the influence on both his maternal and paternal sides is evident in the values they imbued in their children – the importance of family, the value of hard work and education, an uncompromising moral code, compassion for those less fortunate and unflinching refusal to accept an unjust political regime or acknowledge its oppressive laws.

As a young activist in the Pan-Africanist Congress, at the tender age of fifteen, Moseneke was arrested, detained and, in 1963, sentenced to ten years on Robben Island for participating in anti-apartheid activities. Physical incarceration, harsh conditions and inhumane treatment could not imprison the political prisoners’ minds, however, and for many the Island became a school not only in politics but an opportunity for dedicated study, formal and informal. It set the young Moseneke on a path towards a law degree that would provide the bedrock for a long and fruitful legal career and see him serve his country in the highest court.

My Own Liberator charts Moseneke’ s rise as one of the country’s top legal minds, who not only helped to draft the interim constitution, but for fifteen years acted as a guardian of that constitution for all South Africans, helping to make it a living document for the country and its people.

Sujets

Personal Memoirs

Political

Lettres et linguistique

Biography

Memoir

Politics

Autobiography

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Publié par	Pan Macmillan South Africa
Date de parution	01 janvier 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781770105096
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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My Own Liberator

My Own Liberator
A MEMOIR
Dikgang Moseneke
PICADOR AFRICA

First published in 2016 by Picador Africa
an imprint of Pan Macmillan South Africa
Private Bag X 19, Northlands
Johannesburg, 2116
www.panmacmillan.co.za
ISBN 978-1-77010-508-9
SPECIAL EDITION ISBN 978-1-77010-539-3
EBOOK ISBN 978-1-77010-509-6
© 2016 Dikgang Moseneke
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the details, facts, names and places mentioned, as an autobiography this book is partly based on memory. The publisher and author welcome feedback, comments and/or corrections that could further enrich the book.
Editing by Alison Lowry
Proofreading by Lisa Compton
Cover design by K4
Cover photograph by Gisele Wulfsohn/South Photographs

Contents
DEDICATION
FOREWORD BY THABO MBEKI
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Prologue
1 My paternal parentage
2 My father and his siblings
3 On my mother’s side
4 Early childhood
5 ‘Eagles, sir!’
6 High school days, twice cut short
7 Arrest, detention and interrogation
8 On trial at the Old Synagogue
9 Robben Island, here we come …
10 Wheelbarrows and handguns – the first six months
11 Taming the wild beast
12 Education project
13 Eighteen-day hunger strike
14 The Makana Football Association
15 Prison letters, visits and unfailing support
16 Homecoming
17 Coping with the new world
18 The start of a career
19 Husband and father
20 Maluleke, Seriti and Moseneke
21 The business of business and football
22 Activists in revolt
23 The Black Lawyers Association
24 The Bar
25 Some notable cases
26 The end of exile – and of apartheid
27 The PAC and the indecision
28 A few detours during transition
29 Negotiations and an interim constitution
30 ‘Dikgang, I am glad I have found you …’
31 Back to the Bar, acting judge and Constitutional Court nomination
32 Telkom and NAIL
33 The bench beckons again
34 My family hits a deadly patch
35 ‘What matters is what is good for our people’
Epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NOTES
PICTURE SECTION

Dedication
I t does not come easily to know to whom one owes a dedication in a tale that divulges remarkable human props and crutches along a long and winding voyage. Is my first gratitude perhaps due to my mother, Karabo Mabel Moseneke, and father, Samuel Sedise Moseneke, who stuck it out with each other until his death and with us, their children, as they nurtured us in a rocky nest of familial affection?
Ought I not acknowledge my primary and secondary school teachers – Mashikwane Susan Moseneke, Marope Susan Thulare, Makhudu Ramopo, Jafta Kgalabi Masemeola, Getz Komane, Eunice Dinalane and Stanley Mmutlanyane Mogoba – who spat at inferior apartheid education, soared above it and gave their all to their pupils for no or little personal profit?
But is perhaps the dedication due to the many stalwarts on Robben Island, who not only helped bring me up but also tutored me on the history and contours of our long and glorious struggle against colonial exclusion and towards a just, inclusive and humane society? They included Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and Neville Alexander, at some distance, and closer, John Nyathi Pokela, Zephania Mothopeng, Harry Gwala, Steve Tshwete, Mlamli Makwethu, Joe Gqabi, Sedick Isaacs, Selby Ngendane, Johnson Mlambo and Klaas Mashishi.
One may rightly observe that but for my career in law my world would have been markedly different. That is true. Should I then dedicate this life story to my early tutors, who included Mike Meyer, Steven Klagsbrun, Godfrey Pitje, Griffiths Mlungisi Mxenge, Guy Hoffman SC, Marumo Moerane SC and, later, Arthur Chaskalson CJ? If so, how could I look past comrades and members of the Black Lawyers Association and other progressive attorneys, too many to mention, who single-mindedly briefed me as counsel until I earned the prestigious status of senior counsel, was elevated to the High Court bench, was later appointed by President Thabo Mbeki to the Constitutional Court and, in time, served the republic as deputy chief justice?
However, on balance, I dedicate this modest personal memoir to two sets of people. First, to my wife and partner, Kabonina Naomi Moseneke, and my daughter Duduzile, my son Sedise and our departed son Reabetswe Botshelo. Robala ka kagiso Mokwena ! More than anybody else, Kabo and her children bore the full brunt of the 40 years of my marauding role in the struggle for freedom and the practice of law. They stood by me, tolerated my absence from home and forgave my shortcomings.
In addition, I choose to stake my trust in the future. I consecrate this work to the youth of our land, of Africa and of the world, where radical change is necessary. This is because, ordinarily, young people are deeply intolerant of social inequity. After all is done and dusted, each young person is her or his own liberator in the personal space but so, too, together with others, in the public and social enterprise. No young person, and indeed no generation, may outsource to others the task of achieving meaningful and inclusive freedom, least still to those who wield political or other public power. Each is her or his own liberator.

Foreword
D uring 2008, I was mindful of the fact that both the then chief justice, Pius Langa, and I would complete our government mandates the following year. In 2009, Chief Justice Langa would have served his fifteen-year term as a member of the Constitutional Court and would therefore have to retire. For my part, I would complete my two terms as president of the republic.
I therefore decided that one of the things I would do before leaving office would be to propose to the Judicial Services Commission that the then deputy chief justice, Dikgang Moseneke, should succeed Chief Justice Langa once the latter had completed his mandated period of service. Unfortunately, this was not to be, as the national executive committee of the ANC decided to ‘recall’ me in September 2008.
As readers will discover in this memoir, after working for fifteen years as an attorney and an advocate, including as senior counsel, Dikgang decided to go into private business between 1995 and 2001. However, in 2001, I approached him to request that he consider leaving business and accept an appointment to the bench. This view was shared by former President Nelson Mandela, the then chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson and other senior members of the legal community. Fortunately, Dikgang acceded to our requests.
With the approval of the Judicial Services Commission, I appointed Dikgang to a permanent position in the High Court in September 2001 and later, in November 2002, to the Constitutional Court. When Chief Justice Chaskalson retired, I appointed Justice Langa to succeed him and simultaneously elevated Justice Moseneke to the position of deputy chief justice. Both appointments came into effect on 1 June 2005.
At the time we approached Dikgang to persuade him to join the bench, we were concerned about the judiciary’s need to be transformed and strengthened, especially in light of the fact that South Africa was a new constitutional democracy, with the constitution being the supreme law of the republic. Accordingly, we were continually preoccupied with the matter of drawing into the judiciary properly qualified people, including and especially as this related to the Constitutional Court.
In July 2003, I addressed a judicial symposium convened by the chief justice to discuss the important matter of the transformation of the judiciary. On that occasion I cited comments that had been made by Alexander Hamilton, one of the most prominent of the founding fathers of the United States of America, concerning the supremacy of the US constitution and other matters. Among other things, Hamilton said:
To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents … [These] must demand long and laborious study, to acquire a competent knowledge of them. Hence it is that there can be but few men in the society, who will have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of judges. And making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature, the number must be still smaller of those who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge.
I then cited the case of the fourth chief justice of the United States, John Marshall, who served in this position for over three decades, from 1801 to 1835. Like Alexander Hamilton, Marshall, a friend of George Washington, had fought as a soldier and an officer in the ranks of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.
History shows that, as chief justice, John Marshall played an outstanding role in terms of defining how the US constitutional democracy should function. This included such important matters as the separation of powers, the relations among these powers, and the role of especially the Supreme Court in ensuring that ‘the constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents’, as Hamilton put the matter of the defence of the constitution as the supreme law of the land.
At the Judicial Symposium,