Quote of the week
Early in 2016, a racist outburst by a white woman in KwaZulu-Natal, Penny Sparrow, ridiculing Black beachgoers as ‘monkeys’, and announcing that thenceforth she would ‘address the [B]lacks of South Africa as monkeys’, published in her online profile, was quickly disseminated countrywide. It convulsed South Africa in shame and acrid anger. The [Constitutional] Court was not unaffected. Previous members of the Constitutional Court took comfort in reflecting, with evident satisfaction, on the absence of racially loaded and racially defined splits. Dramatically, these now fractured the Court.
"Rainbows and Realities: Justice Johan Froneman in the Explosive Terrain of Linguistic and Cultural Rights" - Constitutional Court Review
It amounted to an usurpation of the powers of [the Municipal Council] by a political body which, on the papers, does not appear even to have had sight of the documents relevant to the selection process including the findings of the interview panel. In my view, the involvement of the Regional Executive Council of the ANC in the circumstances… constituted an unauthorised and unwarranted intervention in the affairs of the council. It is clear that the councillors of the ANC supinely abdicated to their political party their responsibility to fill the position of the Municipal Manager with the best qualified and best suited candidate on the basis of qualifications, suitability and with due regard to the provisions of the pertinent employment legislation as set out in paragraph 1 of the recruitment policy. This was a responsibility owed to the electorate as a whole and not just to the sectarian interests of their political masters.
