'ConCourt changes not in line with SA democracy'

"We don't want to review the Constitutional Court; we want to review its powers," Zuma said, adding that he intends looking into the powers of the ConCourt in order to balance the legislative, judicial and executive powers of government. Often dissenting judgments have "more logic than the one that enjoyed the majority", he said.

Warren Freedman, associate professor at the University of Kwazulu-Natal's School of Law warns that "[t]his is how our democracy was founded in 1994 and how we have been operating since we adopted the new Constitution in 1996." Although various democracies around the globe operate within a system allowing a nation's highest judicial power to be reviewed, he said, this is in direct opposition to how South Africa's democratic system operates. "Any changes to that would signify a radical change in the way our constitutional democracy works," Freedman told the Mail & Guardian.

South Africa's democratic system allows the ConCourt to review decisions made by Parliament -- government's legislative arm. However, Zuma and other senior leaders inside the ruling ANC have in the past sharply criticised rulings by the ConCourt and the judiciary at large, which discount decisions and laws passed through Parliament. Speaking to Mail & Guardian, the University of the Free State's department of constitutional law Professor Loot Pretorius argued that any adjustment of the ConCourt's powers "changes the nature of the game". The status of the Constitution and the ConCourt are "immediately changed once the powers enshrined within those institutions are themselves changed," Pretorius said.

Read the full article on http://mg.co.za.