It is worrying that there are increasingly desperate and shrill attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the IEC by making unsubstantiated and spurious allegations to raise public suspicion about its impartiality and honesty.
The decision by the Electoral Court to overturn the decision by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) that Jacob Zuma was
Constitutionally Speaking
Blog Authors
Latest from Constitutionally Speaking
Retaining Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula as Speaker is not a legal matter, but a political choice
Whether Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula remains Speaker of the National Assembly is not a legal matter. Neither is it a matter of the application of the ANC’s step-aside rule, as that rule applies to stepping aside from party activities. As with all the previous ANC decisions to replace the Speaker, this is a purely political decision that…
The case for an academic boycott of Israeli universities complicit in the Gaza onslaught
Apart from the odd statement demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, South African universities have, by and large, remained silent about the ongoing killing of Palestinian civilians, an onslaught that the International Court of Justice recently found could plausibly amount to genocide.
Confronted with what Pankaj Mishra rightly describes in the most recent London Review of …
All-white, all-male legal teams are wrong on so many levels
The (at the very least) incestuous practice of appointing all-male and all-white legal teams breeds (or perpetuates) a special kind of elite mediocrity. The only people who seem to be oblivious to this problem are those who benefit from it.
Over the weekend, the conservative Afrikaans Sunday newspaper Rapport carried an indignant front-page report about…
Why ending the ANC’s cadre deployment policy may do little to end corruption and nepotism
The ConCourt decision to reject the ANC’s bid to overturn an order for it to hand over all records of its cadre deployment committee is a victory for openness and transparency. But the ANC’s formal cadre deployment policy is only the tip of the iceberg.
The Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture had much…
Apartheid of the soul: On Wilgenhof abuses and those who justify or defend them
Staunch defenders of abusive practices at Stellenbosch University residences like Wilgenhof resist change, and cling to a version of their old exclusionary identity, one that is defined in opposition to a larger South African identity. Maties must root out toxic and exclusionary culture exposed at Wilgenhof, but is it brave enough?
I lived in Wilgenhof…
On David Teeger, Cricket SA and the wrongheaded freedom of speech arguments made in his defence
What the Teeger case illustrates is just how difficult it is to devise (and consistently apply) a clear set of free speech principles to ensure the fair and consistent regulation of controversial statements made by members and captains of national sporting teams in accordance with democratic values of dignity, freedom and equality.
The decision by…
A hustle here and a hustle there — how things work (maybe) in Cuba
Plaza Revolución, Havana
I have been travelling through Cuba over the past three weeks — a country venerated for its socialist commitments by both faux and sincere ‘revolutionaries’. But I still do not understand much about the country. The facts do not fit the theory, because the ideological framework that most South Africans — from…
Rugby, Rassie, the Springboks, my father and me – a South African parable
I have always had a complicated relationship with rugby and the Springboks, a relationship almost as complicated as (and inextricably linked to) the relationship between me and my late father. As a boy, I loved rugby and the Springboks above all else. One could say I loved the Springboks as fiercely as I yearned for…
Julius Malema has opened himself to criminal charges of ‘scandalising the court’
Malema’s claims outside the East London Magistrates’ Court were intended to delegitimise the trial and its outcome, and to intimidate the court into ruling in his favour.
Over the past decade, as the broadcasting of court proceedings have become commonplace, populist attacks on judicial officers and the judgments they produce have become more conspiracy-fuelled and…