Of course, the headline could just as easily read gay bashing womanising president appoints homophobic women’s rights opposer and religious nut to bench after contributing to homo-hysteria locally and abroad.
But when going up against the Teflon coated President Jacob Zuma, who has successfully sued for defamation of character, escaped rape and corruption charges that would have sunk a lesser man, one should probably not write such things. And make no mistake; Zuma is a real man, with five wives, two fiancé’s, many children, and a personal belief that that same-sex marriage was a taboo not to be tolerated in any normal society. “When I was growing up, unqingili (homosexuals) could not stand in front of me,” Zuma is oft quoted as saying.
Some will say why rehash history, apologies have been made, and life must move on.
Well, if Msholozi didn’t keep himself in the news then perhaps it would all go away for the man who earned the ire of Aids activists around the world for not only having unprotected sex with a woman that was HIV positive, but for taking a shower afterwards to ‘cut the risk of contracting HIV’.
No, he has to appoint Jon ‘Goat Sex’ Qwelane to be an ambassador in Uganda. This is a country which at one stage proposed a death sentence for people who have sex with other people of the same sex. In January, David Kato, a campaigner who led condemnation of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, was murdered not long after suing a paper that outed him as gay. Police denied the killing was because of his sexuality. Three months before the murder, Uganda’s Rolling Stone newspaper had published the photographs of several people it said were gay, with the headline ‘Hang them.’ Qwelane recently escaped with his editorial thuggery intact because of the Equality Court rescinding his hate speech conviction. Now the uman Rights Commission is no doubt going to do it all over again, which will drag on forever, again.
Then, his erstwhile friend, Julius ‘Malignant’ Malema, had a buddy fork over R50 000 for hate speech against women relating to Zuma’s rape case.
Now Zuma nominated Mogoeng Mogoeng as Chief Justice, a man the Sonke Gender Justice Network is petitioning against for saying, inter alia, that the relationship of husband and wife should never be overlooked by a judicial officer as a mitigating circumstance for rape.
There are other controversials by the soon-to-be Chief Justice who will be Chief Justice because honestly, when has Zuma ever lost a fight?
So what has this all to do with sluts?
As some may be aware, SlutwalkJHB is coming soon. The recent media exposure (some would say witch hunt) of Mogoeng, is the straw that breaks this camel’s back. Yes, Mogoeng only made three judgments out of a few, but the language and judgments of those three were questionable at best and horrendous at worst.
But in a country where it is estimated that women are more likely to be raped than they will learn to read and amid building hatred against homosexuals, the need to claim the right to our bodies is stronger than ever before. It is for all of the above, that Mogoeng should not be Chief Justice, that Zuma has to attend a gay wedding and Malema observe rape trials.
Is there no untarnished leader who would fight for our rights as humans out there?
Update:
President Zuma places one more brick in his homophobic wall: “It is my pleasure and honour to announce today, the appointment of Honourable Justice Mogoeng Thomas Reets Mogoeng as the Chief Justice of the Republic of South Africa.”
