Tyranny of the majority: Ramatlhodi gets dirty and discredits the courts
Adv Ngoako Ramatlhodi, in his latest attack on the judiciary, is descending to dirty tactics (see Times report).
No longer content with dictating a doctrine of judicial restraint to the courts (as he did in an April article this year) he now discredits them by suggesting they are allowing themselves to be misused by a "minority tyranny", namely the Democratic Alliance (DA).
His remarks are framed as an attack on a political party but in fact he attacks the impartiality of the judges, suggesting they are partisan and thereby discrediting them. He calls the DA the leader of a "new tyranny". Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande recently said much the same thing, accusing the print media of conducting a huge liberal offensive against our democracy. The clear implication was that the press is in cahoots with the DA.
Both Ramatlhodi and Nzimande are democratic centralists and therefore believe in the tyranny of the majority: every institution must be controlled by the one party which runs the state. It is therefore unthinkable to them that the courts or the press should be able to rule or write against the government.
That is why Ramatlhodi, in his attack on the Constitution last year, described the separation of the powers between the executive, legislative and judicial arms of state as a fundamental concession by the ANC during negotiations and claimed it "emptied" the executive of power.