Protect the public from the public service
prevent social-grant beneficiaries from being denied their meagre but critical income. The LRC went the same route to have teacher deployment handled more rationally by the Education Department.
Increasingly it seems that the judiciary is all that stands between the public and a public service that would on occasion cause very poor and heartless decisions to be visited on the most vulnerable.
Government itself is not blind to these trends but its response has been as predictable as it is unfortunate – senior politicians associated with the judicial service have effectively accused the judiciary of encroaching upon the rightful business of the executive.
This and other utterances about transformation within the judiciary and the increasing powers granted to a politically aligned Judicial Services Commission are worrying.
Justice Cameron’s book allays many of those fears. Cameron is not simply an exponent of rule of law; he is a banner-waving fan with a large vuvuzela dedicated to supporting a strong judiciary and above all the South African constitution.
Given his long dedication to ending conscription under apartheid, supporting ARV treatment as part of HIV policy and the rights of gay people, it is no surprise that Cameron is upbeat about our constitution. What is more surprising is value he finds in the role of judiciary under apartheid and even colonial years where maverick judges used elements of Roman-Dutch and even English law to reign in the state and avoid some of the worst injustices.
Cameron celebrates the manner in which our constitution allows government policy and practice to be tested against an array of new human rights and a new concept of how democracies should work.
The judge is no arm-chair jurist. He is a former anti-apartheid activist, a human-rights lawyer, a gay man and the member of a family that has experienced tragedy and poverty. In this book he allows only faint traces of his personal life to intrude into his fixation with justice and constitutionality.
His own remarkable life emerges in a moving but sparse narrative and the book seems slightly impoverished by Justice Cameron’s obvious aversion to self-indulgence. — Glenn Hollands