Of Constitutional Court and the Democratic Government's ability to Govern!
Recently, both electronic and print media have reported that the ANC, through its returning President and Secretary General, have muted a view that calls for the review of the powers that are vested by the Constitution to the Constitutional Judges. From the onset, it must be clear that the Constitution of any country cannot be reduced into a stature given its dynamic nature.
Hence, like everything under the sun, Constitutions are subject to change. As such Section 45 (1) (c) of the South African Constitution provides that the Parliament must review the Constitution annually. The need to review the South African Constitution is more serious given the fact that history teaches us that Courts could be used to frustrate progressive socio-economic change.
To illustrate, Ngoako Ramatlhodi once correctly argued elsewhere that "in the past 17 years...(there has been)... a sustained and relentless efforts to immigrate the little power left with the executive and the legislature to civil society and the judiciary...Power (is) systematically taken out of the legislature and the executive to curtail efforts and initiatives aimed at inducing fundamental changes".
He further argued, as Francis Fanon in his "Pitfalls of National Consciousness", that the situation described above could result into a context where "elections (freedom day celebrations) would be regular rituals handing empty victories to the ruling party". Somehow a similar point was made by Marx and Engel's that the government executive is nothing, but the managers of the interests of the ruling class (NOT Party).
Flowing from the above, it is fair to request that those who have arrogated themselves the status of being "the gurdians of the Constitution" (although they neglect a critical question of who "guard the guardians") should welcome and view the call correctly made by the President as an endeavor to strenghen the most important and cardinal principle of separation of powers.