No, Minister Sisulu, the fault does not lie with our courts or the Constitution
DATE: 18 January 2022
AUTHOR: Daily Maverick
By Narnia Bohler-Muller and Gary Pienaar
Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s opinion mischaracterises the concept of the rule of law as no different from authoritarian rule by law. Examples she gives are of apartheid and Nazism. The picture she seeks to paint cannot be further from the truth.
Last week, Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu published an opinion piece in which she, entirely reasonably, lamented the “sea of African poverty” that persists in South Africa. However, she unreasonably blamed this pernicious evil on the Constitution and the “Western” concept of the rule of law.
Equally unreasonably, and despite the tidal wave of evidence of maladministration and corruption, especially by recent incarnations of the democratic government of which she has been a senior member since its early days, supposedly neither she nor other members of the executive or the public service bear any responsibility for the abuses of power and authority entrusted to them by that same Constitution.