South Africa's report card on democracy gets worse

With the National Assembly and most national, provincial, and local government bodies largely under ANC control, the Zuma government is presently targeting private media and the independent judiciary as elements that allegedly  require increased executive supervision. It is worth noting that not long after the wife of the minister of state security (intelligence) was convicted, amid extensive media coverage, of drug smuggling, the same minister was leading the ANC’s effort in the National Assembly to muzzle the media through passage of secrecy legislation. Many South Africans are asking whether the secrecy bill is primarily intended to shield government leaders and their families from public scrutiny and prevent detection of their wrongdoing. Separately, President Zuma and other ANC leaders are promoting the initiation of an as-yet-undefined mechanism to officially “review” Constitutional Court judgments. Zuma has complained publicly that Constitutional Court judges place themselves above the National Assembly, whose members, according to his logic, must be supreme because they have been “freely elected by the people.” Both initiatives are assaults on South Africa’s status as a constitutional democracy.
 A further cause for concern is the effort by “traditionalists” within the ANC to vest judicial powers in hereditary chiefs and transform assemblies of chiefs, together with tribal elders, into courts of first instance for 14 million rural South Africans. Such traditional courts would operate under procedures and customs that in most tribal groups preclude authority roles for women and would involve practices that conflict with South Africa’s liberal constitution. One glaring example is the precept in tribal domestic law that a woman is a minor in the custody of her husband and his family. In some tribal groups, women are even prohibited from entering the place in a village where the chief sits with elders. If a woman seeks to address the chief, she must shout her statement from a distance or send a man to make the statement on her behalf. Another concern relating to the allocation of judicial powers to chiefs is the influence they would have over the legal status of persons residing in their areas of jurisdiction. Those out of favor with a chief could be denied identity documentation, and their rights as citizens, even the right to vote, could be abridged. A similar system has been used in Zimbabwe by the ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe to limit the number of registered voters.
 In the ANC, closing ranks against outsiders is considered an imperative, but in fact there is declining comity among members. Prominent ANC provincial leaders and extraordinarily rich party power brokers jockey for advantage, and some of their methods are quite brutal, with incidents of physical assault on the increase. In December 2012, the ANC will hold a conference to elect the party president and ultimately the next South African president. Zuma, still in his first terms as party and state president, is facing a revolt by powerful factions that want to displace him and his allies so as to gain greater access to positions and resources for themselves.

Previous

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Next