One can learn a lot from reading the legal opinions provided to Ministers. This week I learnt a new word - longiloquent (meaning long-winded) – by reading a legal opinion provided to Lindiwe Sisulu, who is the Minister of Defence and is also known as The Princess.
I also learnt that when Ministers account to Parliament they are members of the [...]
Posts under ‘Rule of Law’
The Princess and the moon
On lies, self-defense and Israeli impunity
During the apartheid era all South Africans – even white South Africans – who possessed even an iota of scepticism and common sense, became all too familiar with the lies and propaganda of the apartheid state. When an anti-apartheid activist died after being tortured and then murdered by security police members, we were told in [...]
Blue light bullies: often illegal
Some people will defend the indefensible until they are literally blue in the face. Sadly our politicians seem to be particularly afflicted by the pathological inability to face facts and to admit that there is a problem – even when the problem is there for all to see. Instead they will argue that black is white and white is [...]
Minister Sisulu and the US judicial system
Maybe one’s view of the US criminal justice system is wrong. Having lived in the US for a while, I have always had the idea that US authorities take crime rather seriously and are rather ruthless and persistent in trying to prosecute criminal suspects. While they are not nearly as efficient in running the country [...]
Why the silence from good ANC members?
One of the gravest threats to a constitutional democracy in a one party-dominant system, is the conflation of the governing party with the state. Where this happens, the dominant political party begins to act as if it is the state and its officials begin to believe that they are above the law or that they [...]
On freedom of assembly
One could say all is well that ends well. But news that the Presidency has distanced itself from an earlier missive which purported to ban all protests around the Union Buildings still leaves one with a worry about the Presidency’s commitment to free speech and concerns that it has an eccentric view about its own [...]
What now for Shaik and De Kock?
The Constitutional Court today found that the President had erred and had acted irrationally by not affording the victims of “politically motivated crimes” a hearing before making a decision on whether to pardon the perpetrators of those crimes. In Albutt and Others vs President of the RSA and Others Chief Justice Ngcobo, writing for a unanimous court, [...]
Road rage drivers beware
The Sowetan reported yesterday that a Cape Town student, Chumani Maxwele, 25,was arrested last week on charges of crimen injuria for “waving away” President Jacob Zuma’s noisy, blue-light convoy. Maxwele says he ”waved away” the President’s blue light convoy “as if to say ‘hamba’” because of the noise. The police claim that Maxwele had shown his middle [...]
Why the Rule of Law matters
A news report this morning sadly reminded me of the novel, The White Tiger, in which Arivind Adiga provides a cunning and often brutal depiction of India’s class struggles. The fortunes of the main character, Balram Halwai, a cynical, foul-mouthed, but witty narrator, rise after he murders his boss.
In the novel Balram, a chauffeur, recounts his transformation from [...]
A short lesson on Presidential pardons
Ok class, listen up. A short lesson on Presidential pardons seems to be called for. The lesson is required because seldom has so much nonsense been spoken by so many different people with different political convictions, than recently on the granting of Presidential pardons.
First the President claimed wrongly that Schabir Shaik had not applied for [...]
