Using taxpayers’ money to fund Jacob Zuma’s legal bills is unconstitutional
The intuitive feeling that the government spending scarce resources on such a case is probably illegal, is correct
With unemployment and social welfare at crisis levels and an actively shrinking economy, one would expect the government to spend the little funds it forcefully extracts from taxpayers on comparatively important things, such as grants, the police, or giving title deeds to emerging black farmers who lease state land. Instead, our wise rulers try to out-compete one another in wasting precious, scarce resources. The intuitive feeling that this is probably illegal, is correct. As can be expected from a developing country such as SA, our constitutional jurisprudence is not as mature and sophisticated as that of, say, Germany or the US. Many of the cases that reach the Constitutional Court are relatively straightforward and deal with superficial legal questions mostly surrounding the Bill of Rights. It comes as no surprise, then, that there are various sections in the Constitution which are, at least, under-emphasised, and at worst, completely ignored. One such section is Section 195, whi...
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