uMkhonto weSizwe Party has come out strongly in rejection of Monday’s Western Cape High Court judgement barring its deputy president and parliamentary caucus leader John Hlophe from participating in the Judicial Justice Commission.
The party said in the rejection it would appeal the decision saying it amounted to interference by the court. MKP said the judgement is also evidence of how bad the constitution is.
“This judgment represents everything that is wrong with the current constitutional dispensation in South Africa. It cannot be that 3 unelected judges who are not lawmakers but interpreters of the law, allow a racist minority to subvert the will of the people. Such judgments render the election process of public representatives a futile exercise if unelected judges can overturn the will of the people,” MK in a statement issued by the national spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndlhela.
MK took particular exception to the DA’s involvement accusing the former opposition and now part of a governing pack, of pursuing an apartheid agenda.
“As the MK Party we will not allow a white dominated and racist party like the DA, to have the final say as to who may or may not represent our party in the JSC. If indeed the Constitution allows for a return to apartheid, then it is the Constitution which must be urgently changed. This is nothing but a cruel reminder of the pain inflicted by the oppressive judicial system under apartheid,” said MK.
MK is not alone in the critique of the country’s constitution. The African Transformation Movement last month slammed both the Constitutional Court and the supreme law of the republic after a landmark judgment declaring sections of the citizenship act unconstitutional for requiring that anyone seeking to be citizens of another country would automatically lose their South African citizenship if they failed to secure the written permission of the home affairs minister.
Both parties are widely expected to make strong submissions to parliament’s constitutional review process currently underway. Meanwhile Action SA said it has made its own submission and among others wanted took issue with the preamble of the constitution and the Bill of Rights which which it said were being exploited by illegal immigrants.
“Firstly, amending the Preamble of the Constitution, specifically the text “South Africa belongs to all who
live in it”, is necessary to correct its persistent misinterpretation, which has been used to extend
constitutional protections to those residing in the country illegally. In practice, this deliberate misreading has placed undue pressure on limited public resources and compromised the government’s responsibility to prioritise the needs of South Africans,” said Action SA Parliamentary Leader Athol Trollip in a statement.
He said the state in South Africa currently has way too much obligations as a result of ambiguities in the constitution.