Alarm at planned 'research' of ConCourt decisions

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Nadine Mather and Chloë Loubser

Die Burger reports that a move by Cabinet to research the judgments of the highest court in the land has raised alarm bells, with renewed fears that judicial independence may once again be under threat. Professor Willem Landman, the CEO of the Ethics Institute in South Africa described the proposed review as "inappropriate", adding "[g]iven President Jacob Zuma's [way] of putting the courts in their place, one is inclined to be suspicious about the motives."

Cabinet spokesperson Jimmy Manyi said that the government wants to establish how the Constitutional Court's judgments have affected the lives of ordinary South Africans and influenced socio-economic transformation and judicial reform. This would be done by appointing a research institute to assess the Constitutional Court's decisions. Further details will be made public next week, Manyi said. Landman, however, noted that the court's findings do not in themselves have any effect on people's lives, except if the executive chooses to give effect to them. "Then, and only then, can impact be evaluated," Landman told Die Burger.

The Cabinet statement comes in the wake of State President Jacob Zuma's recent remarks to Parliament that the judiciary must respect the separation of powers and should not make policy, while other senior ANC leaders have also criticised what they believe are judgments by an activist court that have strayed into the executive's policy domain. DA MP Dene Smuts described cabinet's move as "one of the strangest proposals to date" while constitutional law expert, UCT's Professor Pierre de Vos, said that if the motive is based on the belief that the court is interfering with the executive and legislative authority, then Cabinet's decision is absurd, Die Burger says.

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