Grieve-ous act? Lindiwe Sisulu’s latest tirade against critic ‘plagiarised’ speech by former UK attorney general

The controversy around Cabinet minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s recent opinion pieces has been further fuelled by claims that she plagiarised portions of her latest op-ed from a speech by former UK attorney general Dominic Grieve.

This op-ed is the second Sisulu has published on IOL within a fortnight, giving credence to the notion that the minister is seeking to raise her public profile in advance of a challenge for the ANC presidency at the party’s electoral conference at the end of the year. 

The minister’s latest op-ed comes in response to widespread criticism of her controversial piece in which she “attacked” the judiciary, prompting a rebuke from Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, on Wednesday. The column also drew criticism from prominent civil society groups and ANC veteran Mavuso Msimang. 

Her most recent lengthy column on IOL, headlined “Sisulu hits back at Mavuso Msimang”, is a roughly 2,800-word retaliation to an op-ed by Msimang on Daily Maverick. Significant portions of the column appear to have been lifted from a speech by Grieve, as identified by social media users including Financial Times Southern African  correspondent, Joseph Cotterill and writer Palesa Morudu Rosenberg on Twitter. 

Although her spokesperson has denied that Sisulu’s conduct technically meets the definition of plagiarism, it appears clear that the minister borrowed portions of her op-ed without adequate attribution. 

A September 2013 speech by Grieve, titled “The rule of law and the prosecutor”, contains stark similarities and, in some instances, identical phrasing to passages from Sisulu’s column. Both Sisulu and Grieve refer to distinguished British jurist, Lord Tom Bingham.  

Of Lord Bingham, Sisulu says: “In 2010, one of the United Kingdom’s most distinguished jurists in the last hundred 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.”

While Sisulu credits Bingham’s The Rule of Law, she does not credit Grieve. 

Yet her words are, for the most part, identical to Grieve’s, who says in his speech: “In 2010, one of the United Kingdom’s most distinguished jurists in the last hundred years, Lord ‘Tom’ Bingham, published the seminal work ‘The Rule of Law’ (I suspect we will hear more about the thoughts of Lord Bingham as the conference progresses!).

Lord Bingham’s book built upon an academic paper which he had delivered four years earlier in 2006 and in which he had looked at what exactly is meant by the rule of law.

In his 2010 book Lord Bingham 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.’”

Grieve then refers to Bingham’s “eight principles which he saw as being the key ingredients necessary to support that aim”. Sisulu does the same, brazenly copying Grieve’s speech word-for-word. 

The stark plagiarism in Sisulu’s op-ed occurs again, when she refers to Professor Joseph Raz and his 1979 work The Authority of Law.

Yeah… on the left is Lindiwe Sisulu’s latest op-ed. On the right is a 2013 speech by the former UK attorney general. Maybe it’s positivism. Maybe it’s another P-word. https://t.co/YGGReD8IRX pic.twitter.com/clDrHFp2an

— Joseph Cotterill (@jsphctrl) January 12, 2022