Durban - South Africans had forgotten about the “Rainbow Nation” to chase personal wealth, the country’s chief justice, Mogoeng Mogoeng, said in Durban on Thursday.
Credit: INDEPENDENT MEDIA
Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng. Picture: Matthews BaloyiMogoeng, speaking at the 14th Victoria and Griffiths Memorial Lecture at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said South Africans had a “preoccupation of making money”.
He said that South Africans had stopped pursuing the ideals that both the Griffiths had died for during the struggle to defeat apartheid.
He questioned why South Africans had resigned themselves to greed.
“The cause was never about ensuring that a few black people get rich.”
He said that he was not surprised that the issue of race had come to the fore in December and January. “What is it we have been doing to facilitate a better understanding of race relations?”
He said all South Africans of all colours had done little to promote the Rainbow Nation.
He said the country needed to do much to address issues such as the economy, poverty and land distribution.
There were many discussions needed.
“Let the people ventilate. When we do that, we will find a solution.”
He also took aim at the legal profession, criticising lawyers for fleecing Road Accident Fund victims of their awards.
But he pointed out that it was not all gloom.
He said that when former president FW de Klerk released the leaders of opposition parties in the early 1990s he wondered “what trick is this?”
But he said that since then he had learned that “black and white South Africans can do the unthinkable” when finding solutions to the country’s problems.
ANA