I get worried when government corruption appears overwhelming and people console themselves by saying: "At least the courts will protect us."Pretoria’s initiation of withdrawal from the Rome Statute and thus from the International Criminal Court (ICC), is not an isolated notion. It is part of a trend of disrespecting courts and other instruments of justice and human rights that hamper power and money-grabbing opportunities by government and its friends.Withdrawal from the ICC was foreshadowed when our government backed the destruction of the SADC tribunal based in Windhoek. That court dispensed justice to individuals whose governments trampled on their rights, but when Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe moved to demolish it, leaving people in the region helpless against lawless states, SA joined right in.Even the courts in SA itself show growing evidence of government disrespect for the law and the rights of its own people.Take last week’s decision in the case of the Bakwena ba Mare...

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