Comrades demands grit but so does the courtroom

Judge Ratha Mokgoatlheng put his foot squarely in it yesterday in the High Court in Pretoria when he went on a tirade about a request from a defence lawyer in the Senzo Meyiwa trial to be excused from court on Monday because he is running the Comrades Marathon on Sunday.

After angrily speaking about “justice delayed is justice denied” in a case in which family members have been waiting for closure for a decade, Mokgoatlheng fumed: “This is what happens in a South Africa run by blacks. A white advocate will never have the gall to ask me that.”

While many took offence at what one of them, Good party’s Brett Heron, called “racially divisive language”, which is “entirely unacceptable”, I was more intrigued about the fact that a senior advocate, Charles Mnisi, would have thought that taking part in the annual KZN athletic spectacle was more important that defending an accused in a murder case.

I wondered, initially, whether advocates have to swear an oath, similar to the Hippocratic one taken by doctors, to act at all times in the best interests of their clients and the legal system.

Then I thought about it a little more. Mnisi was, after all, asking to be excused from attending court on Monday, which would be a recovery day and not race day itself.

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He said he was planning to drive back to Johannesburg after the race and, obviously, would not make it in time.

Now, as an advocate who presumably gets paid a decent whack for his time, I ask; could he not have afforded to fly back to Gauteng, either late on Sunday night or early on Monday morning?

As someone who has five Comrades marathons under my belt (although many years ago now), I do remember the post-race agony.

That post-race agony for me, I remember, was made worse by hobbling down the aircraft steps at the then Jan Smuts airport on one occasion. That hobbling – everybody knew what it was caused by – was worn as a badge of honour, though.

What an entrance to court it would have made had Mnisi got back in time and hobbled in on Monday morning and asked for the court’s indulgence for his gait, by explaining to the judge that he had just travelled 90km on foot from Pietermaritzburg to Durban but that, while his legs may be hurting, his mind was ready for the fight…

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Completing the Comrades is, for all entrants, a triumph of mind over matter because human bodies are simply not made for that sort of effort. Will power and not muscle power gets you over the finish line.

I do realise that many runners put their lives on hold for the first half of any given year in getting ready for the race. I know I did.

Job, family, friends all took a back seat to joining the “100 Club” (100 miles, or 160km, in one training week). But I never missed a commitment – or ducked work – because I was a runner.

If you can commit yourself to finishing the Annual Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Pain, surely you can suffer a little more discomfort on a recovery day to honour a professional appointment?

The Comrades Marathon – the gruelling training, the arduous competition itself and the agony of recovery – is not for sissies. It’s a quest you can’t walk, or hobble, away from. Pretty much the same as life in general.

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