Mantashe defends right to attack judges

A Business Day report says this comes after former ANC and SACP leader Raymond Suttner, now a professor at Unisa, said that Mantashe 'should have known better' than to attack SA's highest court. Mantashe responded: 'The holier than thou critics of the ANC tended to think that any critical view on the behaviour of judges constituted an attack on the judiciary, as if judges have unlimited rights to trample on individual rights or rights of other institutions.' Mantashe said that Suttner 'is taking me to task for my supposed attack' on the Constitutional Court. However, in his attempt to point out my shortcomings he commits a grave error. Suttner casts aspersions on the judgment in the rape case against Zuma, saying that he escaped conviction because the judge in the case was a sexist,' Mantashe said. 'So again Suttner can attack the outcome of a court ruling and the behaviour of a High Court judge, but is not guilty of undermining the judiciary. This selective approach to our institutions and agencies is what has dumped the country into the problem in the first place.' Full Business Day report

Suttner pulls no punches in his stinging attack on the ANC leadership. In the article in Business Day, he writes: 'What Mantashe and other members of the Zuma leadership have had to confront is that the man they protect and fall under stands more disgraced than any other ANC president in history. We can recall how JS Moroka betrayed his comrades after the Defiance Campaign and other moments of shame. But no ANC leader has been charged with rape and escaped conviction on such sexist grounds. No leader has previously stood trial for such a range of corrupt practices, and had to engage in such protracted efforts to prevent evidence being heard. ' Full article in Business Day