Quote of the week
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.
Secretary of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State v Zuma and Others (CCT 52/21) [2021] ZACC 18
The doors of Parliament not open to all
We made arrangements to collect our tickets to the public gallery a day before the event, but when we arrived at the side gate of Parliament it was firmly locked. The polite but firm policeman informed me that all gates to Parliament had been locked on instructions form his superiors and that no one would be allowed in or ou
t of the Parliamentary precinct for the next several hours.
This meant that I was barred from listening to my President in my Parliament answering his opposition critics. This seems to be in direct contravention of section 59 of the Constitution, which states that Parliament has a constitutional duty to conduct its business in an open manner and to allow the public access to its activities.
Yet, some power drunk fool decided that the workers, demonstrating peacefully more than a hundred meters away, posed such a mortal threat to all MPs and our President, that the gates of Parliament literally had to be locked against its own people.
Who made this heavy-handed decision? Did this person realise that he or she was sending a signal that Parliament and the President was so far removed from or even scared of the workers that it would lock the very doors of the institution against their own people?
The locking of the gates of Parliament on the very day that the President was speaking in the National Assembly, reminds me rather of the days of the apartheid regime when the President and Parliamentarians had good reason to fear the citizens of the country they were supposed to be governing.
It would be nice to think that the person who made this decision would get into serious trouble. Maybe the President – or more correctly, the Speaker – could have a word with someone so that the next time us ordinary people want to hear him speak, we will actually be allowed into the legislature.
