The judiciary and the legal profession carry immense cultural power. Judges and advocates are not only interpreters of law, they are custodians of the nation's moral vocabulary. When they resort to chauvinistic metaphors or cultural relativism to explain away misogyny, they do more than offend; they legitimise inequality.

When those entrusted with justice indulge in the language of patriarchy, they betray both law and conscience.

There are moments when disappointment cuts deeper than outrage, when those we regard as the stewards of justice, intellect and moral clarity reveal how comfortably they still inhabit the language of patriarchy.

Such a moment came, when retired Judge Bernard Ngoepe compared "women's power" to a key for a Mercedes-Benz and Donald Trump, and Advocate Muzi Sikhakhane dismissed gender-based violence (GBV) arguments as filtered through "feminist, Western, culturally superior, subjective high-horse" thinking.

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These are not harmless musings. They expose the fault lines in how power and gender are still imagined within South Africa's most elite institutions, the judiciary and the Bar, where the language of justice is often polished but its imagination remains profoundly patriarchal.

The poverty of the Mercedes analogy

Judge Ngoepe's comparison of women's power to a Mercedes key is not just distasteful; it is conceptually hollow. A key opens a door; it does not command direction. The metaphor strips women of agency, reducing power to access rather than authorship.

By invoking a Mercedes-Benz, the ultimate status symbol of masculine aspiration, Ngoepe places women's empowerment squarely within a material, male-defined...