Courting risks

WITH telling haste, the Presidency moved to allay anxiety yesterday over Jacob Zuma’s extraordinary comments in a weekend interview about the government’s desire to “review the powers” of the Constitutional Court, but it’s doubtful such assurances are sufficient.

Zuma said in the interview: “We don’t want to review the Constitutional Court, we want to review its powers.”

He went on: “There are dissenting judgments which we read. You will find that the dissenting one has more logic than the one that enjoyed the majority. What do you do in that case?”

Somewhat obscurely, Zuma added that judges were “influenced by what’s happening and ... are influenced by you guys (the media)”.

The Presidency later said Zuma’s comments “must … not be viewed as an attempt by government to undermine the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law”. The intention was rather to “assess the transformative nature of jurisprudence from the highest court”.

Zuma is surely right in saying that if the decisions of Parliament and the executive could be challenged, there was nothing wrong in questioning the decisions of the judiciary, but that’s not the same as being, or seeming to be, willing to tamper with the court.

Given that there have been several key judgements against his presidency, Zuma’s outwardly naive perceptions carry a risk.

That everything is arguable is at the core of the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, the founding document of the highest court. That is why the public has every reason to trust it. All of us, from president to pauper, submit to it as equals.

And that is the powerfully transformative proposition on which our democracy depends.