Sisulu’s plagiarism a ‘very serious issue, killing intellectual property’ – Msimang

Desperation to ascend to the highest office in the ANC is behind this week’s unprecedented attack on the judiciary by Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu – with her plagiarising part of a speech delivered in 2013 by former UK attorney – general Dominic Grieve QC now having sparked a political storm.

Despite condemning black judges for “colonised thinking” in her second published opinion piece – brushing off criticism levelled at her by ANC veteran Mavuso Msimang – Sisulu quoted verbatim part of a speech delivered by liberal-conservative Grieve to the International Association of Prosecutors, without acknowledging him.

Sisulu branded Msimang as being among “reactionaries who seek to suppress robust and honest debate within the ANC”.

Lifting part of Grieve’s speech, Sisulu wrote: “In 2010, one of the United Kingdom’s most distinguished jurists in the last 100 years, Lord ‘Tom’ Bingham, published the seminal work The Rule of Law.

“Lord Bingham looked at what exactly is meant by the rule of law and identified the core principle of the rule of law as being that all persons and authorities within the state, whether public or private, should be bound by and entitled to the benefit of laws publicly and prospectively promulgated and publicly administered in the courts.”

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Msimang said plagiarism was “a very serious issue, which kills the intellectual property that belongs to somebody else – making a mockery of her claim to be militant if she must quote a very representative of a colonial establishment, while making a call of Africa for Africans”.

He said the timing of Sisulu’s attack on the judiciary made her populist intentions of campaigning for the ANC’s most powerful position in the run-up to the ANC December national elective conference obvious.

“Her behaviour makes it very difficult on whether you would want a president who is going to attack her colleagues – denouncing them in public under the guise of not doing what they are supposed to do,” said Msimang.

“Her pronouncements make us wonder whether she is ready for the position that she desperately wants. Whatever her motives and disruptiveness of attacking her colleagues on the year of the ANC elective conference – criticising them for not following the right policies, being self-seekers, millionaires and billionaires – it is questionable.”

Msimang said Sisulu was presenting herself as a person who is different from other people, “one who is the right presidential candidate who would lead this country in reforms and programmes that will be good for society, particularly the poor”.

Sisulu has close ties with the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) faction of the ANC – opposed to President Cyril Ramaphosa – and seen by Msimang as “a constellation of people with bad records; among them a person who has lied to the point of lying about the death of his mother in order to be given money”.

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He added: “It must be questioned what would drive someone to seek an association with those people to find any constituency.

“Everybody knows that the ANC is so ready to condone these serious behavioural processes because the ANC wants unity. What must be understood is that you can’t unite with thieve.”

He said it would be “a very serious and costly oversight” if the ANC national executive committee decided to let this matter go, without responding.

“The president has to find out how a member of his Cabinet can go out publicly and say the rest of her colleagues are people who are not committed to transformation,” Msimang said.

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