Bloomberg

President Jacob Zuma

PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma’s remarks about the constitution in an interview this week are worrying.

The president’s statements, in an interview with Independent Newspapers on Sunday, leave the reader with the impression that he is unhappy with the current constitutional arrangement and would like to strengthen the power of the executive.

He made much of the fact that there are sometimes split judgments with one or more judges dissenting from the majority opinion. Yet, as DA MP Dene Smuts has noted, the Constitutional Court was given a large bench of judges precisely so that it would reflect a wide variety of views and it would avoid the pitfalls of the past when politically reliable judges were given certain matters to adjudicate.

“We don’t want to review the Constitutional Court,” Zuma went on to say: “we want to review its powers.”

The president may have been misunderstood by the many commentators who have expressed concern over his remarks. But some of his utterances in the past suggest that he does not really accept that the constitution is the highest power in the land.

Whatever Zuma’s spokesman may argue, the context of political discourse in South Africa is the fact that Parliament and the executive government are subject to the provisions of the constitution.

Since 1996 South Africa has enjoyed government under the law. Its people are no longer subject to the arbitrary action of the executive or the whim of a majority in Parliament. Does the president mean to tamper with the accord that brought peace to South Africa?

President Zuma should not take it amiss if he is asked to re-state the commitment he made on taking office as president to obey, observe, uphold and maintain the constitution and all the laws of the Republic.

Those who are speaking out are expressing legitimate concerns.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.