This is no time for panic, or for manic depression of the sort that Xolela Mangcu displayed in a column last weekend. This is politics, not rugby -- so the national state of mind should be governed by clear-headed questions, not by the hyperbole of triumph and disaster. We must keep a sense of perspective.
The chief rabbi's confident claim of the importance of the newly published Bill of Responsibilities raises the question of the role of religion in the development of our constitutional society. The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, as we shall show, but does religion promote the Constitution, as the rabbi claims?
Designing a code of conduct for a liberation struggle in exile was the most significant work of his career, Constitutional Court Justice Albie Sachs said on Thursday. "To my mind that was the beginning of the constitutionality at the heart, at the core of the freedom struggle," Sachs said in delivering the second annual Abdullah Omar Memorial Lecture.
It would be a recipe for disaster if the intelligence services had to apply to the courts every time it wanted classified documents kept from the public, the Constitutional Court heard on Thursday. "This would be hopelessly impractical," said David Unterhalter, counsel for the Intelligence Ministry and the Presidency.
The Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday that President Thabo Mbeki did have the power to sack former National Intelligence Agency director general Billy Masetlha. The president had the power to terminate his employment under section 209(2) of the Constitution, read with section 3 of the Intelligence Services Act.
