Siphile Buthelezi, apparently writing for the Progressive Professionals Forum, has suggested that the massive expenditure of public funds at the Nkandla private homestead of President Jacob Zuma is not a matter for public concern or independent investigation (see here).
He argues that the executive is in charge of national security and that expenditure of the kind in question is not a matter into which the Public Protector should be allowed to pry. In support of the arguments he puts up he relies on section 198 of the Constitution, on American law and practice and on the pre-eminence of the executive in our constitutional order when it comes to matters of national security such as the security of the president.
He is wrong, worryingly so - given the progressive agenda of the forum for which he speaks, in the views he has expressed. It is important to understand why he is wrong and to correct his misperceptions in order that progress with our constitutional dispensation can in fact be achieved, rather than just used as a meaninglessly inaccurate name for the forum he represents.
The reliance upon the American experience is misplaced. Nkandla is not the White House. The former is the privately owned homestead of one of our presidents, the latter the official residence of each and every American president over more than the last two centuries. America is in any event not a particularly shining example of the rule of law. Buthelezi's reliance on it as a paragon of constitutional virtue in matters of national security is misplaced.
Just ask Edward Snowden, any unfortunate individual indefinitely detained in the US facility at Guantanamo Bay (the one President Obama was going to close down, but hasn't) and especially those who find themselves there as a result of illegal rendition. A country that is prepared to use drones to attack its enemies without due regard to what it calls "collateral damage" in civilian casualties is not one to emulate, not even on matters of national security, not if constitutional democracy of the progressive kind is what motivates one to get up in the morning.
More disturbing is Buthelezi's reliance on our own constitutional dispensation, as he sees it, to bolster his defence of the expenditure of over R200 million of public funds on Nkandla. Even the only section of the Constitution he expressly mentions does not say what he suggests it says. The principles governing national security affirm the resolve of South Africans to live as equals. National security has to be pursued in compliance with the law, including international law and is subject to the authority of parliament and the national executive. It is not, contrary to the view of Buthelezi, the exclusive domain of the executive branch of government. Nor will saying: "Big Brother knows best", as he implies, make it so.