Hon Speaker, I found the official funeral service for the late Chief Justice Pius Langa a profound experience, even watching from afar. It most magnificently displayed the fact that a new legal order has been firmly established in less than two decades.
The oratory of two Chief Justices, the former and the present, played no small part in that demonstration. But I think it was the character of our departed Chief Justice that imbued the entire proceedings with a historical dimension. His life story and career path, from clerk and interpreter to Chief Justice, now well recited, is itself the story of the legal transition.
He was Pius by name and pious by nature. His second name was Nkonzo, which means prayerful or pious, as Deputy Chief Justice Moseneke has written. He also brought to his role patience, which is one of the fruits of the Spirit, and humanity, which the concept of ubuntu encapsulates.
It is appropriate that we as the legislative branch should consider his legacy as we continue the work of the legal transition.
Firstly, let us be sure to take forward the work that the former late Chief Judges Langa and Chaskalson did together on an appropriate model for the Office of the Chief Justice and the Independent Administrative Agency for the courts, which the Justice Minister will table in due course. That work will complete the changes we have already legislated in the Constitution Seventeenth Amendment and the Superior Courts Acts.
Secondly, as we work on the Legal Practice Bill, let us remember the indispensable role of the independent advocate who will take politically and socially unpopular cases and who is able to take them precisely because he is independent. Pius Langa was such an advocate through the dark days before the transition and even during the dark hours after the new dawn had broken.
There is a third area of work which we should commemorate and that is the freedom of expression. Chief Judge Langa gave seminal, classic free speech judgments in the Islamic Unity Convention and in De Reuck. He was also instrumental in helping the SA National Editors Forum, Sanef, and Print and Digital Media SA to ward off the prospect of a media appeals tribunal by chairing the Press Freedom Commission, especially created by those bodies.
Typically, he said in his foreword that although the media fulfils a critical role, and I quote:
It does not operate in a vacuum; the manner in which it goes about its work will always be of interest to the greater public. This is so because the media concerns people, it is about people. It is about how their lives are touched. Regulation will accordingly always be of interest, particularly in a democratic constitutional state that espouses the values of human dignity, equality and freedom.
The architecture he proposed for the new press bodies based on coregulation by the public and the press was not, in fact, exactly what they adopted. I don't think he liked that. I think there must have been many occasions over the years when his displeasure or his anger was provoked. It is all the more remarkable therefore that imperturbability sat on him like patience on a monument. But then, patience is among the fruits of the Spirit.
Mrs Beauty Langa predeceased the Chief Justice. We extend our condolences to their children and also to the judge's surviving sibling, Mr Mandla Langa, who was once the chairperson of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, Icasa. It cannot be an accident that two gentlemen with such apparently natural grace and self-possession in leadership came from one family. I reiterate what I said to Mandla years ago, not once, but more than once: Thank God for their parents, Mr and Mrs Langa. [Applause.]