The White Inc is setting our country on a dangerous course. They seem to want to reduce our democracy into a form of a kritarchy. This, they do by taking every government decision they don’t agree with to court. They are trying to govern the country by judicial proxy.
We have seen an increasing number of government decisions being challenged in courts right up to the constitutional court. Some really do have merit I must admit. Most of them though, are simply a determined and a well orchestrated attempt at undermining a democratically elected government. We once saw a court challenge against a bill that was still to go before parliament. The bill to dissolve the Scorpions (I am not arguing on the merits of whether the scorpions should have been dissolved or not) went through the committee stage after a vigorous fight by the opposition who were outvoted. Before the bill went in front of parliament for debate, a court challenge was mounted seeking to prevent parliament from even debating it and also interdicting the president from signing it into law. What a pervesion of our democracy!
A bill is exactly that! A bill! Everyone knows what the legislative process entails. After all the lobbying, the debates and the concessions, it comes down to a vote. So why do you want to challenge the end result before the process is finished. At least have enough respect for the democratic process and the people. In the Scorpions case, the Constitutional Court rightfully ruled that it had no powers over what is debated in parliament or what laws are passed in parliament as this is tantamount to one state organ interfering in the work of another. A law has to be passed first before you can challenge it’s constitutionality. (A clause in the law itself after it was passed was eventually found by the Constitutional Court to be unconstitutional and referred back to parliament)
This however, has not stopped the ever resourceful White Inc from threatening the same kind of court challenge with regards to the Protection of Information Bill. This smacks of the tactics employed at Codesa when FW de Klerk and the Nats, supported by other white groupings tried to sneak in a close that would have given the white minority veto powers in parliament.
Each time they don’t get their way on a political matter they threaten court challenge. It is disgusting that whenever they lose a debate in parliament due to the ruling party’s majority we hear comments in the media like, “the ANC bulldozes bill through” or “ANC uses it’s majority to steamroll bill though parliament”. This makes as if it is wrong for a majority party to take advantage of it’s majority. Isn’t this the very essence of Democracy?
The White Inc has been stalling with transformation in various sectors of society and the Judiciary is where they have succeeded the most, in my view. There too few black Silks and the reason is that the recommendation is based on a buddy system within the various Bar Councils to which the White Inc has held a firm grip. This has resulted in too few black lawyers being ready for appointments to the bench and the bench being left with much of the old guard sympathetic to the white course.
White Inc should cease to try and reinvent the rule each time they fail to lobby and influence during the legislative process. They need to respect the fact that the President of the Republic has executive authority and it doesn’t matter who the person of the President is. The fact that they hateZuma so much doesn’t mean undermining the highest office in the land. Zuma isn’t that office, he just occupies it.
This sets the country on a very dangerous course in that the general South African publicstart viewing the judiciary with suspicion and confidence in it drops. They start resenting everything white, which is wrong.
The opposition need to take their rightful place as the defenders of the constitution and our people instead of being the defenders of white privilege.
The ruling party, on the other hand, needs to take consultative processes seriously and view them as a change to get another point of view. Yes, they have the majority but the purpose of a parliamentary system is so that you can get views from everyone and consider them before making decisions.
This will save us from the anarchy and paralysis of the state we are currently headed for. The constant and meaningless court challenges are hardening the attitudes of the ruling party and the general public towards bot the White Inc and white people in general. We do not need a back door rule by the judiciary standing proxy for the White Inc.
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