Publication: Sunday Times Issued: Date: 2006-07-30 Reporter: Paddy Harper Reporter:

The Man Most Likely to Try Zuma

 

Publication 

Sunday Times

Date

2006-07-30

Reporter

 Paddy Harper

Web Link

www.sundaytimes.co.za

 

He faces the most politically significant trial since Magnus Malan’s, but ex-colleagues say he is more than up to the task, writes Paddy Harper

‘He is an incredibly intelligent man, a very good attorney and a great jurist. His performance on the Bench speaks for itself’[]

It is rather appropriate that Judge Herbert Qed’usizi Msimang’s Zulu name means literally “the one who ends all miseries”. Come tomorrow, Msimang, 54, is the man tipped to finally bring to an end the misery *1 which has afflicted ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma, the ruling party and South Africa as a whole since Zuma was first named as a corruption accused by then National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka in 2002.

Although KwaZulu-Natal Judge President Vuka Tshabalala still refuses to name the jurist responsible for hearing Zuma’s fraud and corruption trial until it sits in the Pietermaritzburg High Court tomorrow, all indications are that Judge Msimang will be the man in the hot seat as the file is already with him.

He is the one judge from the KwaZulu-Natal judiciary whose diary has been pretty much cleared for the time-span of the Zuma trial and, being African and hailing from a leading ANC-aligned family from the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, he is one of the few judges likely to be acceptable to Zuma’s hypersensitive backers and supporters.

Whether he brings Zuma’s misery ­ or that of the ANC and the rest of the nation ­ to an end, only time, and Judge Msimang, will tell.

He faces the daunting task of presiding over the most politically significant trial since that of former Defence Minister Magnus Malan in 1996. Ironically ­ or perhaps appropriately ­ Judge Msimang was an assessor in the 1996 Malan trial, which saw Malan and 12 IFP and SADF hit-squad operatives walk free on charges of orchestrating and executing the KwaMakhutha massacre.

Born in Edendale, Pietermaritzburg, in November 1951, Judge Msimang comes from the well-established Pietermaritzburg Msimang family, a member of which, Selby H Msimang, was the first secretary of the ANC in the province.

He attended secondary school in Pietermaritzburg and Nqutu, near Dundee, matriculating in 1969.

His father died when Judge Msimang was very young and he used his mother’s maiden name, Ngwenya, until his early 20s.

In 1970 he enrolled at the University of Zululand, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (BJuris) degree in 1973. He attended the Tulane University of Louisiana in New Orleans, where he completed a Master of Laws in 1975 and returned to South Africa.

Judge Msimang took up a teaching post at the University of Zululand’s KwaDlangezwa campus, where he lectured in the Department of Private Law until 1978. During this time he completed his Bachelor of Laws through Unisa.

During 1978 and 1979 he served as an advocate of the High Court of Lesotho in Maseru, but in November 1979 moved to Pretoria, where he served his articles at Dyason, Odendaal and Van Eeden.

In November 1981 Judge Msimang was admitted as an attorney under the then Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa and set up his own law firm in Witbank in the then-Eastern Transvaal.

In 1985 he moved back to KwaZulu-Natal, going into practice with Pietermaritzburg human rights attorney Peter Rutsch. The two worked together for 10 years, during which time Judge Msimang also acted as a part-time director of the University of Zululand’s Legal Aid Clinic.

“There were two overriding things about Qed’usizi in the time we knew each other as partners and friends,” Rutsch recalls. “The first is his intellect ­ this is a very, very intelligent guy with a massive amount of ability. He is a person who would succeed at anything he turned his attention to.

“The other is that he comes from a very substantial family at Edendale, which has a strong history of playing a leading role in the community.”

This, says Rutsch, is one of the factors which has shaped Judge Msimang’s “very strong drive to be successful, despite being a particularly modest guy”.

In 1995, the firm run by Judge Msimang and Rutsch merged with Shepstone and Wylie, Tomlinsons Incorporated, creating something of a mega-firm in KwaZulu-Natal legal circles.

During this period, Judge Msimang was appointed to the Natal Law Society’s panel of examinations and in June 1996 was appointed as an assessor in the Malan trial.

He also became a member of the Indumiso Teacher Training College’s governing council in 1997; acted as a Small Claims Court commissioner and served on the boards of several other community and professional bodies, ranging from the Ithala Development Finance Corporation to acting as legal adviser to the Maritzburg City Football Club.

In July 1998 he was appointed as an acting judge in the Natal Provincial Division of the High Court of South Africa, sitting on the Bench during parts of 2000 and 2001.

He also served as an acting judge in the Cape Provincial Division from April to September 2001.

In 2002 he became a judge full-time. Since then he has presided over a variety of criminal and civil cases, both in Durban and Pietermaritzburg and the province’s western, southern and northeastern circuits.

Although the cases he has handled have received a fair amount of publicity, Judge Msimang is not one of those media-darling jurists who tips off journalists about “important” judgments in a bid to raise their own profile.

He also comes with a reputation for putting lawyers who try their luck in their place, for being scathing when the dignity of the court is undermined.

Rutsch and other former colleagues describe Judge Msimang as a “person who is not work-shy” and who takes the law very seriously.

And while he comes from a strongly ANC-aligned family, Judge Msimang has a reputation for being a person with political and social beliefs who has never been a political activist.

“He is an apolitical man in a sense,” says Rutsch. “He comes from a political family, but some of us are political and some aren’t.

“This is a man who is very involved in the community and who really loves the law. He was a really good lawyer whose love was the law.”

Former colleagues also describe him as a very private person, who compartmentalises his working world from that of family and close friends.

Another former partner described Judge Msimang as “an incredibly intelligent man, a very good attorney and a great jurist. His performance on the Bench speaks for itself. I was in partnership with him for almost 10 years and I view myself as having been privileged to have this experience.

“We asked him to join us because he was then the best criminal lawyer in KwaZulu-Natal, if not further afield.

“He really is a very good jurist and an incredibly hard worker. I enjoyed being his partner. He works bloody hard and frankly I have a great deal of respect for the man,” the former partner said.

So how will Judge Msimang deal with the massive pressures of a case like the Zuma trial, which has taken post-apartheid South Africa to the very precipice of chaos?

As the trial approaches, on the streets there are threats of strikes, school boycotts and all manner of social upheaval should he allow the prosecution an adjournment to fully prepare their case *2. Earlier hearings have seen Zuma supporters chanting slogans in court and refusing to toe the line laid down by court officials.

“He can deal with that pressure, I have absolutely no doubt,” says another former partner. “He is not somebody to let this kind of thing get to him.”

Rutsch puts it more bluntly: “He’s nobody’s fool, a man of very strong principles and a mercurial temper who doesn’t take crap from anybody. I think he will handle the case very well.”

With acknowledgement to Paddy Harper and Sunday Times.


*1       One would think that if there's a conviction then the judge would just be initiating 16 years of incarceration, surely more miserable than scooting about the beloved country in a flock of black 4x4s signing rousing revo songs to the rabble and occasionally having pre-shower carnal knowledge with what his la Lucia admirer calls a modern-day Mata Hari.

Or is already a done deal?


*2      And allow the defence an adjournment to fully prepare their defence against the State's case.


Me thinks that if indeed he is appointed to hear this matter, then Judge Herbert Qed’usizi Msimang is going to need all of his reserves of wisdom and patience dealing with the stratagems, tactics and theatrics of Advocates Kemp J. Kemp SC and Kessie Naidu SC on behalf of their clients :
(formerly the Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa)

(formerly known as Thomson-CSF Holding (Southern Africa) (Pty) Ltd), as represented by Pierre Jean-Marie Robert Moynot)

(formerly known as Thomson-CSF (Pty) Ltd, as represented by Pierre Jean-Marie Robert Moynot)