KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala has restated his Human Rights Day call for a review of the nation’s Constitution, adding that it might be time for the country to move away from a constitutional democracy.
Zikalala in diagnosing some of South Africa’s challenges said a parliamentary democracy would empower the voice of those voted into power by the majority.
He asserted that the judiciary, while deserving to have its independence upheld, had been responsible for the reversal of some transformation policies.
The premier is the second prominent leader in the African National Congress (ANC) who has raised questions about the role of the judiciary in the country’s transformation agenda.
In January, Minister Lindiwe Sisulu penned an opinion piece attacking judges and the Constitution.
South Africa has through the Nkandla saga and many other examples seen its Parliament fail to put the country’s interests first.
According to Zikalala, South Africa needs to abandon a constitutional democracy where the law of the land is supreme to the voices of those put in power by the majority.
He, like the ANC Women’s League during the height of former President Jacob Zuma’s legal woes, is suggesting that constitutional democracy is not ideal.
The ANC when coming into power in the 90s actively chose this path, frowning upon how the apartheid regime used its numbers in Parliament to continue oppressing the majority.
Zikalala said government’s attempts to transform a poor and unequal society have been undermined by the court’s judgments.