Wednesday, February 19, 2025

August 8, 2023

‘Drunk Judge’ Motata To Finally Face Impeachment As Scathing Ruling Eviscerates ‘Incoherent’ JSC

It is now up to National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, to schedule a vote in the National Assembly that will determine whether Motata is impeached. We will likely have an outcome on that process before 2037. Maybe.

[imagesource:twitter/safm]

Remember that dronk judge who drove his Jag into a wall while pissed out of his mind and then went on to racially berate a white cop for trying to arrest him?

Well, after almost two decades, the ‘incoherent’ Judicial Service Commission (JSC) has finally stopped opposing his impeachment.

The law is notoriously lethargic when it comes to powerful people, but the JSC has now finally confirmed that it will not challenge a Supreme Court of Appeal ruling that Motata should face an impeachment vote.

Judith February, from Freedom Under Law (FUL), now hopes that the matter “will now be referred to the Speaker of the National Assembly with due urgency.” We assume ‘urgency’ in this case to mean less than 16 years.

It has taken a staggering amount of time – as well as litigation launched by FUL – for Motata to face an impeachment vote over what Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) Judge Nathan Ponnan described as his “egregious” conduct during his 2007 drunk driving crash and the trial that followed it.

Not only had Motata – who was found guilty of drunk driving in 2009 – repeatedly and dishonestly claimed that he was not drunk, but he also falsely accused the man who recorded his inebriated conduct after the accident, Richard Baird, of calling him the k-word.

One wonders how he could even recall anything, as the audio and the pics of that night shows him in a ‘Boss Mode’ level of drunkenness.

Naptime for drunk judges [image:twitter/timeslive] 
Motata’s drunken state and his discredited claims of racism were pivotal to the JSC majority’s decision not to support his potential impeachment.

In a report that is understood to have been written by then-commissioner Dali Mpofu, the majority found that Motata’s drunkenness was a mitigating factor – while failing to address the fact that the judge had lied when he denied being drunk.

Frankly, the involvement of Mpofu should give us enough clue as to why justice has been dragging ass like a caged circus lion for the last decade, and then some.

In Motata’s case, a Tribunal had found that the judge was guilty of gross misconduct and should face impeachment over his abusive drunken actions. It also concluded both that Baird had not used the k-word and that Motata had embarked on “a deliberate racially motivated strategy chosen … to get the police officers [at the crash scene] on his side and to alienate Mr Baird”.

“His behaviour at the scene of the incident was characterised by racism, sexism and vulgarity.”

The SCA found that the JSC majority “blurred the distinction between the protection of the institution in the interests of the public at large and the protection of the personal interests of the judge.”

For those who don’t speak ‘protracted legalese’, this simply means that the ‘rights’ of a drunk and racist judge trump everything.

It is now up to National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, to schedule a vote in the National Assembly that will determine whether Motata is impeached. We will likely have an outcome on that process before 2037. Maybe.

[source:news24]