Retired Chief justice Zondo ‘done’ but not ‘out’

Recently retired chief justice Raymond Zondo, has promised to fight attempts challenging his state capture commission report, saying the battle against corruption was far from over.

In an exclusive interview with the Cape Times, Zondo who looks forward to resting and travelling in the next year, said upon his return he will continue to fight corruption.

“I think I might be involved in the practical training of young lawyers, imparting skills to them but I also think there is a good chance I’m going to be involved in some way or another in the fight against corruption. I just think that the levels of corruption are so high in this country that all of us should really be playing a role to strengthen the fight against it so even those who are retired must continue in the fight against corruption.”

Zondo maintained that defending or not defending the State Capture report had nothing to do with leaving the office of Chief Justice but was something separate from the position of having been chairperson of the commission.

“If there was a new litigant, I would be obliged to prepare the record and produce it to the high court because the rules of the high court say the chairperson of tribunal or commission must prepare the record. So the fact that I’m retired would not relieve me from that obligation because there is no one else who chaired the commission.

“The report has already been challenged in court since 2022. There are about 12 or 13 review applications.

One of them has been withdrawn, the others are still pending. Once there was a review application that had been brought, I took the decision to discuss the matter with the president at the time because it’s a presidential commission.

I said to the president we need to decide who would make the decision to oppose or not to oppose or defend the review applications and I suggested that I should be the one because I was more familiar with everything. He agreed.

“I decided that I would oppose (the reviews) because of the importance of the work of this commission. If these review applications were not opposed you could easily find a situation where they get set aside.”

Zondo lamented the slow pace at which the recommendations in the report were being implemented, saying this was a matter of grave concern.

On transformation in the judiciary, Zondo said there was still a need for more women and black judges.

“We also need to have black and female judges in specialised fields, like patent law, intellectual property cases.

What has happened over time is that because women were excluded for a long time at a practical level, it's taking time for them to reach their correct numbers in terms of populating the judiciary.

Black judges and black lawyers and female lawyers and judges when they are in practice as lawyers, they don’t get given exposure to certain branches of law because those are dominated by white males.”

He said the private sector also needed to play a part in enlisting the services of black and female lawyers.

“A lot of work black lawyers and females get comes from the government and parastatals. If the private sector, the business community would seek to empower female and black lawyers, that could result in many black and females lawyers reaching a point of getting to the bench at a time when they already have experience and skills in many of these specialised branches of law where at the moment they don’t get a chance to be involved in. In the Constitutional Court for example, there are still too few women we see appear when they have matters there.”

Cape Times