Eleven things we learnt about SA's leader of the opposition John Hlophe from his memoir

1. Hlophe didn’t actually write the book.

Defying the Gallows is marketed as Dr John Hlophe’s “memoir”, and the uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party has advertised Hlophe as its author. But it is actually written – rather well, to be fair – by someone called Bonga Mfuphi, who appears to have no Google footprint beyond this book. 

Interestingly, this is not the only book published about John Hlophe in 2024. An e-book called Genius In Rebellion: The Revolutionary Leadership of Dr. John Hlophe, by Chris Kanyane, also made its way into the ether a few months ago. How many hagiographies can one man inspire in a single calendar year?

2. Hlophe has a martyr complex, or at least his ghostwriter does on his behalf.

How else do you explain a book that opens: “After at least sixteen years of being tried and having his character and standing as a judicial officer placed under pervasive scrutiny, on 21 February 2024, former Western Cape judge president John Hlophe was sent to the gallows of Parliament to be executed, as it were.”

That “as it were” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, given that what is actually being described there is Hlophe entering the parliamentary precinct for his impeachment hearing. An impeachment hearing which, lest we need reminding, came to pass because of complaints from two of Hlophe’s judge colleagues that Hlophe had attempted to influence them in favour of former president Jacob Zuma during one act of Zuma’s neverending corruption trial. Something of a no-no for a sitting Judge President, needless to say.

3. Nobody messed with Hlophe as a child because they were scared of lightning strikes in retribution.

Not to get all Freudian, but maybe this explains some of Hlophe’s messianic impulses. Hlophe’s father Thomas was a traditional healer, the book records, who was feared in his community “because of his ability to effect lightning strikes, even though this was not the focus of his practice”.

As a result, Hlophe and his brother were given a wide berth by the rough kids in the area (KwaDukuza in KZN). Hlophe’s mother subsequently divorced his father because of “his continued flirtations with the dark side of traditional medicine and, ultimately, the possession of a death-causing substance”.

4. Hlophe was choms with Ace Magashule at Fort Hare.

Finally, someone who knew former ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule back in the day! When Daily Maverick’s Pieter-Louis Myburgh was writing Gangster State: Unravelling Magashule’s Web of Capture (2019), it proved very difficult to verify Magashule’s claims of what he was up to during the apartheid years.

Now it turns out we could’ve just asked Hlophe. Magashule is listed as one of “a number of people who eventually became prominent South Africans” who studied alongside Hlophe at the University of Fort Hare.

5. Hlophe is the most highly educated leader of the opposition for half a century.

This, even his most dedicated enemies cannot dispute. Hlophe was such a gifted student of law that he received a series of prestigious scholarships to read law at Cambridge, culminating in a PhD.

This puts him in the crème de la crème, education-wise, of South Africa’s past leaders of the opposition. Jan Smuts also read law at Cambridge on a scholarship; De Villiers Graaff studied law at Oxford; and Frederik van Zyl Slabbert had a doctorate in sociology.

More recent leaders of the opposition … let’s not go into it; it’s almost Christmas.

6. It is totally unclear how many times Hlophe has been married.

Anyone buying Defying the Gallows and hoping for a juicy glimpse into Hlophe’s personal life (i.e. me) will be left bitterly disappointed. Two women are introduced as wives and, in the blink of an eye, divorced: Nomathamsanqa (cause of divorce: she felt alienated when he was doing his PhD in the UK and they struggled financially) and Nompumelelo (cause of divorce: unspecified).

Hlophe and Nompumelelo were divorced in 2005, which is the last mention of a female special companion in the book, probably because the narrative arc of his life becomes completely consumed by his martyr crusade from that point on. But we know from the hated mainstream media that Hlophe married his fellow judge Gayaat Salie in 2015, with Hlophe apparently converting to Islam at the time. They were divorced by 2023.

It sounds like quite the passionate marriage for a while, however, since one of the claims made against Hlophe in 2020 by his deputy at the Western Cape Division of the High Court, Patricia Goliath, was that Hlophe physically assaulted a male judge who he accused of flirting with his wife. 

7. Some of Hlophe’s judgments would probably not have won favour from the MK party.

If you want extremely detailed explanations of every significant judgment Hlophe has ever written, Defying the Gallows is the book for you – and it spares no effort in elucidating just how pioneering these rulings were. Every time Hlophe picked up his pen, he made legal history, as it were.

One of his many “seminal judgments” is interesting, however, because one wonders what the rest of the MK leadership would make of it. Six months after joining the Bench, Hlophe ruled that a black defendant did not have the right to demand a black judge.

Hlophe’s judgment, as recorded by the book, found that “the objection to the race of a presiding officer was unacceptable” and that “an objection to a presiding officer’s race can never be a reason for [judges or magistrates] to recuse themselves”.

8. Hlophe and Chief Justice Mandisa Maya go way back.

Judge Maya raised some eyebrows at her JSC interview in 2022 when she referred to Hlophe – already on the ropes at that stage – as her “big brother”.

The book states that Maya was one of Hlophe’s first recruits to the Western Cape Bench when he was made Judge President and was seeking to expedite racial transformation.

Maya has previously recused herself from JSC matters involving Hlophe, but in October was one of three members of the Judicial Conduct Committee which upheld a complaint laid by Hlophe against former Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng. The clever folk at Freedom Under Law have laid out why this could be problematic here.

9. Hlophe believes many farms can be legally expropriated without compensation.

Hlophe says judges just need to get more radical about interpreting the Constitution. Among the types of farms that he believes can currently be expropriated without compensation: “unused large farm lands owned by foreign nationals who do not reside in the country” and “any farm that was subject to zero interest loans from the Land Bank during apartheid, which loans were defaulted on and never settled”.

10. Hlophe’s defence on the Zuma influence claims is that the judges shouldn’t have been swayed.

Hlophe does not deny having discussed aspects of Zuma’s corruption trial with Constitutional Court Judges Jafta and Nkabinde. He simply seems to suggest that if they were influenced as a result, that’s on them for being feeble-minded.

To quote Hlophe quoted by his ghostwriter: “I do not believe that judges are easily influenced by casual conversations, and since all I knew about the case is what I had read, mostly in the newspapers, my views could not have been crystallised enough to influence any judge of substance.”

11. A Shembe leader begged him to start his own political party.

The book records that with his impeachment looming, Hlophe was invited to the Shembe congregation in Inanda, KZN, by Shembe leader Mduduzi Shembe. During this visit, Shembe “prevailed on Hlophe to consider forming his own political party to stand up against the ANC”.

Hlophe “promised to think about the suggestion”. But then the MK party lobbied him to join them - and the rest, learned colleagues, is history. DM