WHEN the authors of our Constitution were designing our founding law one of the principal aims was to create a participatory democracy. In other words, those who earn through the ballot box the right to exercise executive authority should take the people with them when making decisions.On many occasions over the first 20 years of our democracy, the courts have struck down legislation, or sent laws back to Parliament to be rectified, because appropriate public consultation had not been done.The latest of these is the Supreme Court of Appeal’s rejection of the South African National Roads Agency Limited’s (Sanral’s) declared intention to apply tolls to the N1 and N2 highways in the Western Cape.Since 2012, the Sanral case has been the subject of prolonged legal action because the City of Cape Town objected to both the plan and the way in which it had been developed.The appeal court agreed with the City that a decision to toll had massive economic and social consequences, and that the ...
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