Lawlessness on the part of the South African state dates back some two decades to the arms deal but reached its apogee under the Zuma administration, the Institute for Race Relations said on Wednesday.
A report by IRR policy fellow John Kane-Berman released this week, says South Africa’s democracy was intended to trade the parliamentary supremacy of the apartheid state for the rule of law. But that structure, in which power would be limited and the courts would have the final say, was crumbling.
Under the rule of President Jacob Zuma, it says, the state has become increasingly lawless.
“However, lawlessness on the part of the state predates Mr Zuma’s election to the Presidency in 2009. An early example was the sabotage by the African National Congress of the parliamentary investigation into the R47 billion arms deal which first came to light nearly 17 years ago.”
This has eroded the founding principle of the post-apartheid democracy in South Africa, which was accountability of the executive to Parliament, Kane-Berman wrote.
The culprits responsible for lawlessness, he argues, “run from the president down to clerks of the court, from directors general to immigration officials, from municipal managers to policemen, from cabinet ministers to petty bureaucrats”.
Their actions ranged from protecting the criminal, to hounding the innocent, to crushing the poor.
“It runs from the unconstitutional to the outright criminal, from the brazen and defiant, to the negligent or ignorant.”
Its effects were seen in home evictions, bribery, the unlawful refusal of mining licences, the failure by the state to pay contractors, and the abuse of tax revenue, he wrote.
“Moreover, sometimes instead of bowing to the courts and the law, the government seeks – unlawfully – to change the law”.
South Africa Today – South Africa News
