Mogoeng Mogoeng

Mogoeng Thomas Reetsang Mogoeng (born 14 January 1961) is a South African jurist who served as the Chief Justice of South Africa from 8 September 2011 until his retirement on 11 October 2021.

Mogoeng was born on 14 January 1961 in Goo-Mokgatha (Koffiekraal) village near Zeerust in the North West Province.

His father was a miner and his mother a domestic worker.

Mogoeng became politically active at high school, from which he was briefly suspended for organising a memorial to the victims of the Soweto uprising.

Mogoeng received a B.Juris in 1983 from the University of Zululand and a Bachelor of Laws in 1985 from the University of Natal.

There he had been active in the Azanian Students' Movement during a time of grave repression by the SADF.

From 1985 he worked for the government of Bophuthatswana as a High Court prosecutor in Mahikeng; though working for a bantustan was stigmatised, Mogoeng was obliged to do so for five years to repay his government bursary.

He obtained a Master of Laws by correspondence from the University of South Africa in 1989.

Mogoeng left Bophuthatswana's civil service the following year to begin practice as an advocate.

After a short period at the Johannesburg Bar, Mogoeng returned to Mahikeng, where he practiced for six years.

He was the chair of Lawyers for Human Rights' Bophuthatswana chapter and a part-time lecturer at the University of Bophuthatswana (now North-West University).

In 1997, Mogoeng accepted an appointment to the North West High Court, though he had felt initially that he was too inexperienced to be made a judge.

He became a judge of the Labour Appeal Court in 2000 and the Judge President of the North West High Court in 2002.

The 2005 case of State v Moipolai involved the rape of a pregnant woman by her long-term boyfriend.

Despite several aggravating factors, Mogoeng reduced the man's sentence from ten years' imprisonment to five because the rape was, he said, not as serious as if a stranger had committed it.

Finally, in State v Mathebe, Mogoeng reduced the sentence, from two years' imprisonment to a fine of R4,000, of a man who had tied his girlfriend to his car and dragged her 50 meters along a dirt road.

Mogoeng's explanation was that the man had been "provoked" by the victim.

When these three judgments were raised in a BBC interview, Mogoeng compared his judgments in sexual-assault cases to a game of football, saying it would be wrong to call Manchester United a bad team because it loses three matches in a season.

Legal academic Pierre de Vos said Mogoeng was clearly the most conservative member of the Constitutional Court.

He pointed to Mogoeng's ambivalence over gay rights – in Le Roux v Dey Mogoeng dissented, without giving reasons, from paragraphs which said it was not defamatory to call someone gay – and to his dissenting judgment in The Citizen v Robert McBride, which would severely restrict freedom of expression.

Moseneke, as the country's Acting Chief Justice pending a permanent appointment, chaired the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) when it interviewed Mogoeng to determine his suitability.

Mogoeng seemed prickly throughout, having to apologize to Moseneke for lashing out at one of his questions.

In response, one commissioner told Mogoeng he seemed "arrogant" and unsuited to the position.

Commentators said that Mogoeng's conduct at the interview heightened concerns about his judicial temperament.

Mogoeng's own view was that he had been "rock solid" at his interview.

In October 2009, in President Jacob Zuma's first raft of judicial appointments, Mogoeng was elevated to the highest court in South Africa, its Constitutional Court.

He was appointed simultaneously with Chris Jafta, Sisi Khampepe and Johan Froneman.

Less than two years later, in mid-2011, Mogoeng was nominated for appointment as Chief Justice.

Mogoeng's nomination was extremely controversial, drawing strong criticism from across the political spectrum, including from within President Zuma's own Tripartite Alliance, as well as from the press, local and international civic organizations, legal academics and bar councils.

Mogoeng was one of the Constitutional Court's most junior members, having been appointed to it less than two years earlier, and having been a relative unknown at one of the smallest High Court divisions prior to that.

Besides his general lack of reported judgments, critics noted that he had failed to recuse himself in S v Dube, a case where his wife had appeared as the state prosecutor.

In addition, Mogoeng was nominated ahead of the expected appointee, Dikgang Moseneke, who had served the Constitutional Court for nine years and as Deputy Chief Justice for six.

Moseneke had already been overlooked once before, when Sandile Ngcobo was appointed Chief Justice, and his second snubbing was attributed to his Pan Africanist Congress background and remarks at a social occasion distancing himself from the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

Mogoeng's own meteoric rise under the Zuma administration raised concerns about his independence.

His nomination ahead of Moseneke reminded many of the notorious supersession by L. C. Steyn, a National Party favourite, of Oliver Schreiner.

Finally, whereas Moseneke had been active in the struggle against apartheid, COSATU said it was concerning that Mogoeng had been a prosecutor for a bantustan.

But the most widespread concerns were about Mogoeng's judgments in rape and gender-violence cases.

The Nobel Women's Initiative accused Mogoeng of invoking dangerous myths about rape and of victim-blaming.

Of the many judgments cited by critics in which Mogoeng had been lenient on rapists and domestic assailants, three were emphasised.

In State v Sebaeng, Mogoeng reduced the sentence of a child rapist on the basis that he had been non-violent and indeed "tender" in raping the victim.