The chattering and twittering classes have been agog this week following the Tuesday announcement of the reasons for the government's so-called review of the judiciary, including the Constitutional Court, and of how this review will be implemented.

Thank heavens that Radio 702's John Robbie chose to have Professor David Unterhalter on the airwaves on Wednesday morning to offer an analysis of the matter rather than Professor Pierre de Vos.

De Vos, a "constitutional law expert" from the Western Cape, has had such hissy fits on the subject during the last few weeks that often he has been almost as obscure as Justice Minister Jeff Thamsanqa Radebe and his boss, President Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma.

In fairness to him, De Vos has not been the only one.

It all began on 13 February or thereabouts when el presidente told a senior Independent Newspapers journalist that the government did not want to review the Constitutional Court, "we want to review its powers".

This was of course, to quote Winnie the Pooh, a classic bit of Zuma tiddley-pom - what Unterhalter deftly called "a fallacious distinction" - because the Constitutional Court is in fact all about its powers: its power to review governmental decisions and to adjudicate whether (or not) these are in line with the constitution.

Good morning, Mr President!

Anyway, given the president's propensity to convolute the most straightforward issues, and given the journalistic habits of the particular interviewer, it seemed to me at the time that the whole thing was a bit of a "misunderstanding".

It didn't seem to me that Zuma was threatening to cripple the Constitutional Court and to end democracy as we know and love it on the southern tip, though I did wonder what could have possessed the chief to say things about the judiciary just at the moment when the Supreme Court of Appeal was considering a matter involving him. Maybe that was the point.

Still, many of my youngers and betters (such as De Vos and others), as well as the fourth estate, grew highly excited and not even the calming and clarifying words of doughty presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj could pacify us.

Everyone started asking whether the government was launching yet another attack on the judiciary and so on and so forth, and started baying for sight of the reasons for the government's review.

Radebe said on Tuesday that the government "seeks[s] to engage the services of research institution(s) to conduct the desired assessment. The identified institution(s) will be expected to: undertake a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the decisions of the Constitutional Court, since the inception of the court, on the transformation of the state and society and how the socio-economic conditions and lives of people or a category of persons or individuals have been and or are affected by such decisions within the context of a transformative Constitution ...."

And the same to you with bells on. It's all fuzzy stuff; there are no proper terms of reference nor were we told which institutions will make the assessment.

Interestingly, and by the way, Robbie asked Unterhalter if he knew whether Wits University had been approached to carry out the assessment of the Constitutional and other courts. (Unterhalter did not know.)

If I were Robbie, or any one else, I wouldn't get over-excited or delighted about having the "academic experts" in on the game ...A certain Protection of Information Bill started its life, courtesy of former Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, on the desks of certain academics at Wits. En kyk hoe lyk ons nou.

What then is the brouhaha about?

Well, for one thing, the non-executive Deputy Minister of Correctional Services, Advocate Ngoako Abel Ramatlhodi, has been banging on in cabinet, apparently quite loudly, about what a shoddy piece of work the Constitution is because it hasn't much helped the majority of South Africans. (I refer to Ramatlhodi as "non-executive" because he doesn't seem to have much to do with his official portfolio. Does he, I wonder, even go to the office?)

But above all, it's quite clear why the government is feeling twitchy about the Constitutional Court and wants to "review" it - or something. It is because the Constitutional Court has been discharging its duties in a proper fashion.

That is: the court has been pointed out repeatedly, as it is required to do (by law), when and where the government has not been doing its job properly. In far too many cases, the government has not been doing the right things for the poorest of the poor.

And to put it crassly, the fat cats don't like to be reminded repeatedly that out there, beyond the Pretoria skyline, are thousands of sad, hungry and angry skinny cats. And of course those cats are not cats at all but our fellow citizens and human beings.

But should not Zuma and the government want to review the roles of the judiciary and the courts in transforming the state and society? Yes, they should if they want to do so, I suppose.

But here's a thought or two ... Many of us believe that former president Nelson Mandela wrote that you can judge a society by the state of its prisons. Actually it was borrowed by Madiba's ghost writer from Fyodor Dostoevsky who wrote it in The House of the Dead (1862): "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

Now, whoever originally wrote it, the point is that the same can be said about the courts and the justice process.

Want to know what's happening in the courts? Pay them a visit and take a look. One doesn't need a fancy research institution or convoluted verbiage to figure out what's going on (or not).

What's more, it can be worked out a great more quickly than in 18 months, the time given by Radebe for the research institution to do its thing.

If I were the president or a member of the executive, I would not worry about fixing what's not broken (e.g., the Constitutional Court). I'd try to get on with some real work; there's plenty of it out there - in the courts.

Jeremy Gordin is a veteran journalist whose biography Zuma will come out in a new edition later this year. This article first appeared in the Daily Dispatch.

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