STATE OF NATION
STEVEN FRIEDMAN: Stop blaming Constitution, start electing right leaders
‘Blaming the Constitution is just buck passing. It removes the need for serious thought on how we hold power to account’
If the Constitution was a person, it would be a serial abuse victim. It has been fashionable for a while for South Africans who are unhappy with the state of society to blame the Constitution. The favoured attack is the claim that it was written to accommodate the saintly Nelson Mandela, not those who came after him. Those who say this rarely explain what they mean, but a little decoding reveals that they claim the Constitution gives the president huge powers that were safe in Madiba’s hands but not in those of Jacob Zuma. Commentators who make this claim are usually impressed with their own cleverness; it is hard to see why. The president in our system is essentially a prime minister with some extra powers — he or she can be removed by a simple majority of MPs; in presidential systems the head of government can be removed only by a supermajority, usually after a trial. Most other presidents do not need to contend with courts telling them who they can appoint to key positions.Unlike...
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