A few days ago Daily Maverick published a piece which I thought initially had the makings of a potential novel about abuses of law. I then discovered that the article was reporting on yet another Jacob Zuma litigation instalment. This time he has unveiled a legal corker - litigating against the SABC to prevent the broadcaster from using the words 'government of national unity'.
Listen to this article 6 min Listen to this article 6 min Somehow Jacob Zuma contrives in his affidavit to argue the term GNU is being employed in a deliberately misleading way by the national broadcaster. Somehow a bloc of MPs representing 68% of the seats in the National Assembly cannot be called a GNU. One would have thought that there was an easy explanation for Zuma's mistake - after all, a coalition of populists, ethno-nationalists and other opportunistic rent-seekers is calling itself a Progressive Alliance.
The affidavit that accompanies the Zuma application is a mash of half-completed sentences and unjustified assertions. That lawyers have prepared this legal shambles yet again raises the role of lawyers in this kind of litigation. In turn, this focuses attention on the role that lawyers have played with impunity in threatening the very fabric of our legal system, much of which has been designed to help Zuma, regardless of the absence of any plausible authority in representing Zuma in a Stalingrad-type case.
Recently, that most distinguished of Constitutional Court judges Edwin Cameron has written the most incisive criticism of this constituency of lawyers "...including some advocates, who seek to propel that agenda. Some...
