Mr Zuma is no ordinary litigant. He is the former President of the Republic, who remains a public figure and continues to wield significant political influence, while acting as an example to his supporters… He has a great deal of power to incite others to similarly defy court orders because his actions and any consequences, or lack thereof, are being closely observed by the public. If his conduct is met with impunity, he will do significant damage to the rule of law. As this Court noted in Mamabolo, “[n]o one familiar with our history can be unaware of the very special need to preserve the integrity of the rule of law”. Mr Zuma is subject to the laws of the Republic. No person enjoys exclusion or exemption from the sovereignty of our laws… It would be antithetical to the value of accountability if those who once held high office are not bound by the law.
We need to continuously remind ourselves and each other that a working democracy is not a society in which leaders are always right. If there was such a society, there would be no need for democracy because we could leave governing to the leaders. Democracy is, rather, a system in which mistakes are noticed and, quite often, corrected and in which leaders accept that citizens and the courts have the right to tell them that they were wrong. – Steven Friedman in The New Age, commenting on the Chief Justice affair
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