Zakes Mda shades Mogoeng Mogoeng following ‘vaccine of the devil’ comments

Novelist Zakes Mda says chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng is a conformist “to a fundamentalist Christian dogma" and conservative evangelical ideology.

He was responding to comments made by Mogoeng on Friday during the delivery of his annual judiciary report.

The chief justice was asked to respond to public condemnation of his prayer against “any vaccine that is of the devil” during his visit to Tembisa Hospital last week.

Mogoeng had delivered a keynote address at the event. During his closing remarks, he prayed against vaccines “meant to infuse triple six in the lives of people, meant to corrupt their DNA”.

He said he was unbothered by the criticism and would not conform to people's expectations of how he should behave as the chief justice.

“I'm not worried about the fictional reputation of this is how a chief justice or a judge should behave. Where is the manual for that? Where do you get it from? What are you trying to have us comply with? I'm not a conformist. Our country, our constitution does not demand of us to be that way,” he said.

Taking to Twitter, Mda wrote: “I heard a judge boast to a television interviewer that he is a nonconformist. Actually, he’s very much a conformist. He conforms to a fundamentalist Christian dogma and to conservative evangelical pro-Israeli ideology.”

One Twitter user defended the chief justice and told Mda to “leave” him alone, but the author was not backing down.

On Monday, he said Mogoeng was “my employee” and he will comment on whatever the chief justice says if he finds it interesting.  

“No, I will not leave him alone. He’s not only your chief justice. He’s mine too. He’s also my employee. Any comment he makes and I find interesting, I will comment on it if I feel like it. Remember freedom of expression does not only belong to him. It belongs to me too,” he said.