Saturday, September 3, 2011

ANC has white-anted the Constitution

Anthea Jeffery writes: “Already the ANC has white-anted the Constitution in various ways …”

This is what the ANC does. It uses its hegemonic position to force its will, actually the will of the power group at the top of the heap, down on all South Africans. It uses the democratic institutions under its control e.g. parliament, to do this. Where these democratic institutions and processes get in the way, the party undermines the system through cadre deployment and the deliberate blurring of the boundary between political party and state. The ANC is white-anting our democracy, not just the constitution.

Also read my posts "The concepts "African" and "democracy" are mutually exclusive" and "While the ANC Plays Big Man". In fact, the ANC is in a hole from which it cannot extricate itself. The ANC has white-anted our democracy, and the infrastructure they inherited. We had an education system, roads, a health system, judiciary and an energy system that worked after a fashion. Instead of taking these and expanding/modifying them to serve all South Africans, the ANC chose to systematically deploy incompetence to the point that these things no longer work or will soon be not working. Do we have to go the way of Egypt, Lybia, Syria ... ? I guess, because the ANC Big Man is not going to give up what it has without a fight.

Read the article at: http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=254005&sn=Marketingweb+detail&pid=90389


Here is an excerpt:

Anthea Jeffery
01 September 2011

Anthea Jeffery says govt proposals on land will oust jurisdiction of courts in key areas

‘Green monster' could wreck both property rights and the rule of law
The green paper on land reform, finally made public on 31st August 2011, is part of a new assault on the Constitution and the rule of law.
On the same day as the green paper was released, the deputy minister of correctional services, Mr Ngoako Ramatlhodi, let the cat out of the bag when he said the African National Congress (ANC) had made ‘fatal concessions' at the time of the political transition (see full article here). Given the balance of forces at the time (including the collapse of the Soviet Union), it had accepted a Constitution which ‘emptied the legislature and executive of real political power' and ‘immigrated (sic) the little power left [to them] to civil society and the Judiciary'. [The Times 1 September 2010]
Mr Ramatlhodi seems to forget that the 1996 Constitution was drafted by an elected constituent assembly dominated by the ANC. In addition, it reflects a very wide-ranging consensus that the new South Africa should be a constitutional democracy in which Parliament and the Cabinet would have to act in accordance with constitutional principles and provisions, failing which both law and executive action could be set aside by a Constitutional Court charged with the task of upholding the Constitution at all times.
Already the ANC has white-anted the Constitution in various ways, and particularly via its strategy of cadre deployment. The green paper on land reform goes much further, for it seeks to oust the jurisdiction of the courts in two key spheres