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
On impeachment and accountability
Impeachment processes are the means through which accountability and fidelity to the rule of law can be attained. To leave such processes suspended in mid-air, as it were, for as long as it would take for the matter to be heard in the ordinary course does not accord with the public interest in the finalisation of the important issues raised in this matter. After all, Chapter 9 institution office-bearers perform an important role in upholding a constitutional democracy, and the determination of the validity of the rules that hold these office-bearers to account cannot be thwarted or subjected to delays.
