Gary Judd KC: Mumbo-jumbo and all that

The Mullahs of Mumbo-jumbo advance the cause of racist superiority

The New Zealand Law Society (NZLS), in partnership with its provider of continuing education is advertising “Tikanga and the law”. Interestingly enough, in a Freudian slip, the advertisement betrays the reality, that tikanga is not law. It says, “hear firsthand perspectives from those working at the intersection of tikanga and the law.”

The advertisement treats tikanga as something distinct from law while promoting its use in lawyers’ professional and ethical decision-making. It forms part of a wider NZLS programme that risks turning ideological precepts into professional obligations.

Maybe some readers can, but I cannot understand how seemingly intelligent people are able with straight faces to promote mysticism from the darkness of bygone centuries as a touchstone for 21st century thought and action. How can a rational person see value in retreat to a pre-European dark age marked by tribalism, mysticism, and ‘might is right’.

The only attempt to justify tikanga idolization is the claim that it is New Zealand’s “first law.” Those who make that claim do not bother to describe law’s characteristics and then to explain how tikanga meets the test. That is, they do not try to make their case through logical reasoning.

Since they will not use reason to justify their position, it is reasonable to assume they cannot. Yet they still wish to impose on modern New Zealand and its hapless people an amorphous assortment of vague ideas that are the product of creation stories and other myths.

These absurdities arouse and deserve ridicule. Perhaps ridicule may be a way of bringing proponents to their senses, since reason is ineffective.

Some readers will be aware that the soon to be abolished Broadcasting Standards Authority has claimed a breach of broadcasting standards by Sean Plunkett and his online media outlet, The Platform, by referring to tikanga as “mumbo jumbo”. See retired judge David Harvey’s discussion in A Regulator Overreaching on Its Way Out.

Whenever I want to get the authoritative read on meaning I go to the Oxford English Dictionary. The print version comprises 21,728 pages in 20 volumes. It used to need a visit to the library, but I can now access it online by subscription.

The first meaning of mumbo-jumbo is historical, “A god or spirit said to have been worshipped by certain West African peoples; a representation of this; an idol.” The second meaning is “Obscure or meaningless language or ritual; jargon intended to impress or mystify; nonsense.”

A great thing about the OED is its supply of quotations. Quotations show how a word or term has actually been used. The most recent quote under the first meaning is “The name of the most powerful one worshipped in West Africa was Mumbo Jumbo” (1992, from F. McLynn, Hearts of Darkness). Hearts of darkness are the placs from which tikanga emerged. We are being cajoled into worship of the great god, Mumbo-jumbo.

Under the second meaning, the flavour is found in “Sebastian..swore loudly that nothing would induce him to take part in the mumbo-jumbo of the imminent Coronation” (1930, V. Sackville-West, Edwardians) and “We..went to vespers in the old church, where we saw a good deal of mumbo-jumbo by red, purple, and yellow priests” (1870, L. M. Alcott, Letter 29 June in E. D. Cheney, Louisa May Alcott (1889).

In a 2024 article, I demonstrated that tikanga may be described this way:

Tikanga in itself is a religion or quasi-religion. There is no doubt about this. The tikanga experts who advised the Supreme Court in the statement of tikanga in the Ellis case, told the Court that tikanga, and I quote, “grew from and is very much embedded in our whenua.” They went on, “in some traditions, tikanga merged with that already present” when the ancestors of today’s Māori arrived in New Zealand.

The statement of tikanga says that knowledge of tikanga is passed down through sources such as institutions of learning, oratory, call, waiata, traditional chants or laments, whakapapa recitations, proverbial sayings and stories. It is also learnt through exposure to practice in everyday life. Some tikanga cannot be known to the ordinary person because it is tapu and kept confined to certain expert people.

Mumbo-jumbo” is thus a perfectly apt description of tikanga and so, returning to the NZLS’s advertisement, it was telling prospective attendees, they would hear firsthand perspectives from those working at the intersection of mumbo jumbo and the law. That the continuing education of New Zealand lawyers should come to this, perverts the values of a once-learned profession.

All this may be thought merely laughable, but the advertising betrays something more sinister. The detailed course prescription Includes “Applying Tikanga in Practice: Civil Law and Professional Responsibility.” Participants will “Consider the relationship between tikanga and professional responsibilities,” and “Discuss ethical decision-making through a tikanga lens.” These topics assume that engaging with tikanga is required in the discharge of professional responsibilities and “ethical” decision making. The plain intention is to promote and reinforce these assumptions.

It is a short step to clothe with legitimacy complaints against lawyers who have chosen not to engage with tikanga that they have failed to act in accord with their professional obligations or have failed to act ethically and are therefore guilty of misconduct or unsatisfactory conduct.

Some may remember that, over two years ago, in the context of my complaint to Parliament’s Regulation Review Committee about tikanga being made compulsory for law students, the dean of a law school wrote:

I suppose it was inevitable that one of the old racist dinosaurs would make a pathetic squeal in an attempt to preserve the status quo….

Mr Judd and his “matauranga Maori is not science” friends can go die quietly in the corner…

See A law school to be avoided. This exemplifies the bitterness and malevolence of some of those trying to promote tikanga in pursuance of the Māori sovereignty agenda. Such people may be expected to use any available weapon to silence the critics of what they are trying to do.

The NZLS’s “Tikanga and the law” promotion is the latest in a concerted NZLS campaign to make lawyers subservient to the way of thinking of the cult that believes in “the taking back by indigenous people of power and control”, to quote Justice Glazebrook’s approving rhetoric*. In New Zealand, that means replacing representative democracy with Māori sovereignty or tribal rule.

NZLS is at the forefront of this movement. Lawyers are being forced to fund a body which wishes to enslave lawyers’ minds. NZLS is just one of the institutions captured by idealogues with these aims.

The institutions which act in this way exhibit the mindset of the Mullahs of Iran. They force their beliefs on members not by machine guns and public hangings, but by the ability to prevent members carrying on the profession of their choice if they do not become a member of the cult or bow to its demands. In the advancement of the cult’s objectives the leaders of these institutions are the Mullahs of mumbo-jumbo.

The cult’s objectives are alien to our values and way of life. It is almost unbelievable that the profession I was once proud to be a member of should be spawning within its own ranks and the judiciary drawn from those ranks persons who demand obedience to a creed of racist superiority.

*The quote is in Tikanga Regulations advance a political agenda. See also, On Judicial Imperialism.

Gary Judd KC is a King's Counsel, former Chairman of ASB and Ports of Auckland and former member APEC Business Advisory Council. Gary blogs at Gary Judd KC Substack where this article was sourced.