Johannesburg - Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng said he believed key public institutions were not being politicised by their public office bearers, but instead, they were being politicised by politicians who had their own vested interests.

Mogoeng made the remarks during an interview with SA FM on Friday.

When asked by host Bongani Gwala, if key institutions were politicised, Mogoeng replied in the negative and offered his opinion.

“What happens in my view is that whatever you do (as a public office bearer), tends to be seen as seeking to push a particular agenda. If you have two litigants in a case before you, there is a decision in favour of this one. So they say ‘oh this one is part of this faction or grouping’.

“The next time you make a decision that is unfavourable, the same people who benefitted from a previous decision will turn around and say ‘it means this person has been bought over by this faction’,” he said.

Mogoeng said it was troubling that society had become so factionalised and disregarded process.

“We have become a highly factionalised society, and the result is there is so much suspicion attached to whatever you do. People hardly ever examine the process that things going through, whether it is a judgment or report, they depend on what they are fed with,” he said.

Mogoeng said the problem was that society looked at institutions through the lens of politics and opined: “The institutions are being politicised, they do not politicise themselves, we see things from a political perspective, that is the problem,” he said.

Mogoeng said he despised corruption, whether it was in the private or public sector, and said he hated all practitioners of corruption.

He bemoaned the levels of exposing private sector corruption in the media, and if said the media gone through such gigantic efforts to expose alleged corruption of the Gupta family, the media could and should expose private sector corruption.

“We must be uncompromising when it comes to corruption, but I don’t think we are there. There are those that are treated well, we are not even willing to investigate allegations against them if they are well made or not.

“There is this bombardment when you try to touch certain institutions or certain people, you will be investigated for the rest of your life, until they finish you off,” he said.

Mogoeng said if the Guptas corruption had been exposed at institutions such as Eskom, Denel and SAA, other corruption by other institutions or individuals at the same organisations should be exposed.

“You come across a tendency where I want to look clean, but I am a corruption practitioner. I am going to identify others because I know how the system works. (I will say) so and so is corrupt, but you must never touch me, otherwise I will deal with you through the capacities at my command,” he said.

Mogoeng also said he believed the only way to root out corruption in the country, was to deal with all corruption. “If you are only going scratch the surface, as I think we tend to do, corruption will be with us for many years to come,” he said, adding that unemployment, poverty, instability and discontentment would continue to be a feature of South Africa.

The Sunday Independent