Mafikeng - The legal profession should expose injustice, however uncomfortable this may be to the powers that be. This is according to North West Premier Edna Molewa during her address at the North West Attorneys Council Annual General Meeting held in Rustenburg on Saturday.
She mentioned the role played by lawyers such as Bram Fischer, who had a privileged upbringing “but chose to associate himself with organisations and individuals that apartheid had deemed undesirable.”

Premier Molewa also made mention of George Bizos and many others to whom this country owe a debt of gratitude for keeping the fire burning in apartheid courts, sometimes to fatal consequences.

“The challenge for you is to consistently speak truth to power, thus ensuring that a stage is never reached in our history where these sacrosanct provisions are undermined.

“What this implies is that you should be intolerant of mediocrity in your ranks. You must make it your business that members of this profession prepare adequately when they agree to take on cases.

“Your profession has come in for some serious flak lately. Judges have been charged with various indiscretions, including failing to pay maintenance, failing to declare potentially conflicting interests, as well as drunken driving and defeating the ends of justice.

‘If the serious nature of the situation did not have disastrous consequences for the profession as a whole, everyone would be saying comedians, cartoonists and others like them have been handed raw material with which to come up with new jokes, but this is no laughing matter’

Premier Moilewa said she expected the members of the North West Attorneys Council to root out misconduct and ill-discipline within the legal profession. - BuaNews