Long Live South Africa’s Democracy — A Female David Knocked Out Goliath Today!

This is a great day for South Africa’s democracy. In Johannesburg today the Constitutional Court dropped a bombshell. In a unanimous judgement, the Court determined that “The president failed to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution.”

This is in relation to the failure by President Jacob Zuma to comply with the Public Protector’s remedial action on the upgrades to his Nkandla homestead. The Public Protector had asked Zuma to repay some of the R246 million, or USD 16 million, spent on non-security items such as the swimming pool, initially called a “fire pool”, a chicken run, cattle kraal, amphitheatre, and visitors’ centre.

Zuma for a long time ignored the remedial actions.

And now he just found out the hard way that in South Africa arrogance has legal consequences.

Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng announced the decision of the court as follows: “The failure by the president to comply with the remedial action taken against him by the Public Protector in her report… is inconsistent with Section 83b of the Constitution, read with sections 181.3 and 182.1c, and is invalid.”

Chief Justice likened the Public Protector to David — “She [Madonsela] is the embodiment of a Biblical David… who fights the most powerful, and very well resourced Goliath that impropriety and corruption by government officials are.”

Long live South African democracy — you give us hope for the rest of the continent. Hallelujah.