Johannesburg – There is nothing intrinsically wrong with criticising the Constitutional Court, but it is important to offer evidence in support of your view.
Helen Zille doesn’t seem to care about evidence-informed criticism.
Despite being a senior leader of the official opposition as federal chairperson, she proceeded to undermine the integrity of the Constitutional Court without offering a shred of evidence to justify her scurrilous attack.
Zille, in a series of tweets, suggested that the apex court had leaked the outcome of the case about whether the local government elections should be postponed to the governing ANC.
She tweeted: “If information is leaking from the ConCourt to the ANC, it is nothing short of a constitutional crisis. If this is so, cadre deployment will have destroyed every institution, right up to the ConCourt, turning them into instruments of ANC power abuse, rather than protectors of the people against ANC power abuse. “That is the crisis we are facing now. South Africans must wake up.”
First, the use of the conditional “if” is no excuse.
No one, least of all a senior and seasoned politician, simply wonders aloud about the implications of a court that is captured by the ANC, unless they intentionally want the public to take it as a bald statement of fact.
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A penchant for language games can’t exonerate Zille politically.
In fact, precisely because language matt ers, and because Zille knows this as a former journalist, and a published author, should we hold her responsible for insinuating something so egregious without producing concrete evidence.
Either Zille has evidence that our justices are “instruments of ANC power abuse” or she doesn’t.
If she has such evidence, then she has a duty to expose the ANC and the judiciary. Her instinct for accountability, as an opposition politician and a former journalist, should kick in at this point, and she should be motivated by the knowledge that our liberal democracy requires that truths about the state be lifted to the surface.
Transparency is a precondition for accountability. We have a right to know.
If Zille agrees with this, as she must, then why is she accusing the court of being compromised but not showing us the evidence?
The Zille we have come to know isn’t exactly timid.
If she doesn’t show us such evidence, then there is only one conclusion we can draw. Zille is talking nonsense.
She is bullshitting, but she is hoping that her bullshit will be believed by those already suspicious of both the ANC and our courts.
That would be a dangerous game to play, weaponising public distrust for short-term political gain. Given the role the judiciary played before democracy, supporting a wicked political system, it has taken hard work for our apex court to develop both a body of jurisprudence that is genuinely premised on achieving a more just and egalitarian society, and related to that goal, to get South Africans to trust the judiciary. That doesn’t mean we cannot criticise.
The Judicial Service Commission, for example, is doing shoddy work. That is easy to demonstrate.
Equally, aspects of the administration of the Constitutional Court need urgent addressing by the next chief justice. But to impute unethical and unconstitutional behaviour to the Constitutional Court jurists without evidence must rank as a new low for Zille.
• McKaiser is a political analyst, broadcaster and author.
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