The KwaZulu-Natal premier and ANC provincial chairperson Sihle Zikalala appears to have his eye on the national and provincial conferences later this year (Photo by RAJESH JANTILAL / AFP)
KwaZulu-Natal Premier and ANC provincial chairperson Sihle Zikalala is the latest senior party leader to take aim at the judiciary in the run-up to the party’s elective national conference in December, calling for a “debate” on the supremacy of the constitutional court over parliament.
Zikalala will attempt to secure a second term as chairperson at the ANC’s provincial conference later this year.
The radical economic transformation (RET) faction in KwaZulu-Natal is looking at either finance MEC Nomusa Dube-Ncube or eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda as potential candidates for chairperson on its initial slates.
Zikalala’s backers are pushing for him to stand uncontested on a cross-factional “unity” ticket and will formally announce this if they succeed in winning the ANC eThekwini regional conference, set to convene in April or May.
To achieve this, they will need to win support from the RET faction and Zikalala’s attack on one of its targets — the judiciary — appears to be an attempt to establish common ground with his former allies.
The call to rein in the courts was made by Zikalala during his address at the Human Rights Day commemoration in Ixopo on Monday, and follows the broadside launched against the judiciary earlier this year by the tourism minister and ANC presidential hopeful, Lindiwe Sisulu.
“It is incorrect that when we want to transform our province and country we are stopped by another arm of the state. When we want to implement BBBEE [broad-based black economic empowerment], preferential procurement and radical socioeconomic transformation we are stopped by the courts,” Zikalala said in his address.
“I sincerely believe that [it is] time we consider if this apparent inequality is in the interests of the ideals we fought for when millions of our masses entered the liberation struggle and adopted the Freedom Charter, which says, like the Constitution, that South Africa belongs to all who live in it.”
Zikalala said the Constitution — and the courts — had become an obstacle to transformation.
“We must remember that the Constitution itself is subject to a review and we should not allow the document to slow or reverse the process of transformation which we now know cannot be postponed forever.”
Zikalala’s comments appear to have been aimed at both securing headlines nationally ahead of the December national conference and — equally importantly — the ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial conference to be held in June or July.
His government media team released a copy of his speech with a commentary describing his statements as “groundbreaking” and “the strongest call yet for the country to adopt parliamentary democracy” .
A second term as ANC KwaZulu-Natal chairperson is not guaranteed for Zikalala, who has alienated his former allies and failed to make new ones since 2018. His comments appear to be an olive branch to his former comrades in the RET faction.
Although Zikalala had been part of the RET slate going into the 2017 national conference, he shifted to the “unity” faction led by Cyril Ramaphosa, successfully standing as KwaZulu-Natal chairperson on a unity ticket in 2018.
The Ramaphosa faction in the province is trying to strike a deal with the RET grouping, which has regained ground, to allow Zikalala to stand uncontested. His criticisms of the constitutional court, and the judiciary more broadly, will be aimed at winning them over.
“We want to issue the call for us to debate whether it is not time to move away from absolute rule by the constitutional court to a situation where we have parliamentary democracy in which the voice of the people who elected [MPs] is supreme to all other voices,” he said.
Zikalala did not stop there.
He said the government needed to pay “serious attention” to the “recent reversal of transformation policies by courts”.
“While we all have to respect and uphold the independence of the judiciary, we need to review the dilemma imposed by the system of constitutional democracy. This system places one organ of the state above others.
“It is time we should debate whether the country does not need parliamentary democracy where laws enacted by parliament should be above all and not reviewed by another organ. It cannot be correct that transformation and the will of the people gets undermined by one arm of the state, possibly making a mockery of the idea of democracy itself.”
“Radical socioeconomic transformation through legal prescripts is the only instrument that can resolve the current socioeconomic imbalance and ensure that indeed there is a better life for all,” he said.
On Tuesday, Zikalala used a public forum on the ANC’s November electoral performance to blame the courts — in part — for the party’s poor performance at the polls, along with the arrest and incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma and the wave of violence and looting that this sparked.
Zikalala said that both the fight over the succession in the Zulu royal family and the “timing” of the court judgment in the battle over the leadership of the Shembe Church had cost the ANC votes.
“Others believed or have a view that the ANC government is not intervening. Whether that view was correct or not and whether you were trying to explain the processes, that becomes secondary,” he said.
“That also includes the whole judgment on issues of KwaShembe, not to say the judgment was wrong or right, but the matter or timing that it happened leading to a number of activities around KwaShembe Church are issues that are there outside of the control of the movement,” he said.
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