THE Constitutional Court has declared Judge Willem Heath’s heading of the Special Investigative Unit of the Heath commission as inconsistent with the constitution. Heath’s SIU, established during former president Nelson Mandela’s tenure, was initially asked to investigate government corruption in the Eastern Cape. Mandela extended the unit’s mandate to encompass the whole country. In July, while addressing a two-day conference on corruption, Heath said the unit had recovered R314m since it was founded in 1997. Constitutional Court president Arthur Chaskalson said on Tuesday the intrusive investigative quality of the SIU was incompatible with the separation of powers between the judiciary and the government, as required by the South African constitution. The judgment was unanimous.