VAT about-turn may be short-lived relief for GNU, investors

How long will it be before the GNU becomes “a Coalition of the Unwilling”?

- MUSHTAK PARKER

THE South African Constitution and Bill of Rights promulgated in 1996 by Madiba’s first administration in a free country are generally regarded as two of the most progressive in the world of democracies, until of course even those were subjected to state capture during the Zuma presidency.

Whether the constitutional architects ever envisaged the resort to the constitutional and supreme courts by often disgruntled, frustrated, corrupt and delusionally undemocratic politicians through their frivolous and arbitrary actions, would start to dominate the polity through the practice of lawfare seems ambivalent.

There is the legitimate resort to the courts by both politicians and citizens for the independent judiciary, a prerequisite of a liberal democracy, to decide on a cornucopia of matters relating to executive powers, the role of parliament, separation of powers between church and state, freedom of speech and movement, the rights of citizens in every socio-economic activity and so on.

In the latter case the lawfare playbook is unfolding in areas touching the very core of democratic governance and its potential impact on policy and society. In the US the pushback against the policy on the hoof insanity of the Trump administration which has targeted the judiciary, the media, the scientists, the supposedly impartial bureaucracy, and the global trading partners of the US, has precipitated a spate of injunctions against the President and his cabinet cabal.