{"id":40145,"date":"2026-07-21T09:52:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T07:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=40145"},"modified":"2026-07-21T09:54:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T07:54:00","slug":"sa-retired-judge-defends-judicial-independence-despite-political-past","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/sa-retired-judge-defends-judicial-independence-despite-political-past\/","title":{"rendered":"SA retired Judge defends judicial independence despite political past"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>South African (SA) retired Judge Takalani Raulinga has defended his judicial independence, stating that his political affiliations prior to joining the judiciary had no bearing on his job.<\/p>\n<p>Opposition party uMkhonto weSizwe lodged a formal complaint with Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi over his appointment as the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) oversight judge.<\/p>\n<p>uMkhonto weSizwe argued that Raulinga&#8217;s past political association with the African National Congress and his friendship with SA President Cyril Ramaphosa, raise legitimate concerns about bias.<\/p>\n<p>IDAC is capacitated with full police powers to conduct criminal investigations independently and effectively.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;ChannelAfrica&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":40150,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-40145","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"IDAC is capacitated with full police powers to conduct criminal investigations independently and effectively.","published_date":"","news_description":"IDAC is capacitated with full police powers to conduct criminal investigations independently and effectively.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40146,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40145\/revisions\/40146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=40145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}