Impeached judge itching to take on South African president

 In a sign of the seismic polit­ical changes in South Africa, John Hlophe, a once-cele­brated judge whose career ended ignominiously with his impeach­ment just five months ago, has been parachuted into parliament to lead the official opposition.

Dr Hlophe is expected to be in full flight on Friday, when he will open the debate in response to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s speech on Thursday, setting out his new coalition government’s plans to tackle South Africa’s myriad problems – including an unemployment rate of 32%, high levels of crime, deteriorating infrastructure, and land ownership in a nation bedevilled by racial inequality.

“Watch this space. See him perform on Friday,” Dr Hlophe’s lawyer, Barnabas Xulu, told the BBC.

Dr Hlophe’s dramatic fall as a judge – and meteoric rise as a pol­itician – can both be traced to for­mer President, Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s most polarising politician who defied the odds by making his own stunning comeback in the 29 May general election.

Less than three years after he became the first South African president to be jailed for an offence – contempt of court – Mr Zuma led his newly formed party, uMkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation) into third spot in the election.

But as he was barred him from taking up his seat in parliament because of the 15-month jail sen­tence he had received, Mr Zuma turned to Dr Hlophe to take up the all-important post of Leader of the Opposition.

The post comes with an annual salary of just under 1.7m rand ($94,000; £73,000), which Dr Hlophe is likely to appreciate after reportedly losing his judge’s pen­sion because of his impeachment for gross misconduct.

MK has become the official opposition because the sec­ond-biggest party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), has joined Presi­dent Ramaphosa’s coalition gov­ernment after his African National Congress (ANC) lost its majority in the election for the first time since the end of the racist system of apartheid in 1994. —BBC