two years earlier, and having been a relative unknown at one of the smallest High Court divisions prior to that. Besides his general lack of reported judgments, critics noted that he had failed to recuse himself in S v Dube, a case where his wife had appeared as the state prosecutor. In addition, Mogoeng was nominated ahead of the expected appointee, Dikgang Moseneke, who had served the Constitutional Court for nine years and as Deputy Chief Justice for six. Moseneke had already been overlooked once before, when Sandile Ngcobo was appointed Chief Justice, and his second snubbing was attributed to his Pan Africanist Congress background and remarks at a social occasion distancing himself from the ruling African National Congress (ANC). Mogoeng's own meteoric rise under the Zuma administration raised concerns about his independence. His nomination ahead of Moseneke reminded many of the notorious supersession by L. C. Steyn, a National Party favourite, of Oliver Schreiner. Finally, whereas Moseneke had been active in the struggle against apartheid, COSATU said it was concerning that Mogoeng had been a prosecutor for a bantustan. But the most widespread concerns were about Mogoeng's judgments in rape and gender-violence cases. The Nobel Women's Initiative accused Mogoeng of invoking dangerous myths about rape and of victim-blaming. Of the many judgments cited by critics in which Mogoeng had been lenient on rapists and domestic assailants, three were emphasised. In State v Sebaeng, Mogoeng reduced the sentence of a child rapist on the basis that he had been non-violent and indeed "tender" in raping the victim. The 2005 case of State v Moipolai involved the rape of a pregnant woman by her long-term boyfriend. Despite several aggravating factors, Mogoeng reduced the man's sentence from ten years' imprisonment to five because the rape was, he said, not as serious as if a stranger had committed it. Finally, in State v Mathebe, Mogoeng reduced the sentence, from two years' imprisonment to a fine of R4,000, of a man who had tied his girlfriend to his car and dragged her 50 meters along a dirt road. Mogoeng's explanation was that the man had been "provoked" by the victim. When these three judgments were raised in a BBC interview, Mogoeng compared his judgments in sexual-assault cases to a game of football, saying it would be wrong to call Manchester United a bad team because it loses three matches in a season. Legal academic