Britain’s Guardian newspaper remarked this week that the election of Pope Benedict XVI, formerly German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “will clamp the cold hand of foreboding round the hearts of all who care about the developing world”. Indeed. It was also a bitter disappointment for forward-looking Catholics who want their church to contribute to the material upliftment of the world’s hungry, homeless, ragged and disease-afflicted billions, rather than merely minister to their immortal souls.
Nicknamed “God’s Rottweiler” and “the Panzer Cardinal”, Ratzinger comes out of Catholicism’s most intellectually rigid, Eurocentric and authoritarian-hierarchical traditions. Believing the church has an absolute monopoly on truth, these denounce all other perspectives as false and all internal reform initiatives as “relativism”. The 78-year-old leader of the world’s one billion Catholics is hostile to ecumenical movement, which seeks closer ties between Christian denominations, and has banned the phrase “sister churches”. Loath to broaden the concept of Europe beyond historical Christendom, he is unlikely to build on his predecessor’s tentative overtures to Islam. On social issues, he offers reformists no succour, having described the ban on the ordination of women priests as “infallible doctrine” and condemned homosexuality as “a moral and spiritual evil”. There is little evidence in Ratzinger’s past pronouncements of the loving kindness Christ enjoined on his followers — more of the iron certainties and uncompromising intolerance of dissent that drove the inquisition.
From such a man — whatever the moderating influence of the Catholic Church’s highest office — it is unrealistic to expect many concessions to suffering humanity. As with all ideologues, religious or political, it is the Word, not human welfare, that is the measure of things. In particular, we can expect no movement on the church’s atrocious proscription on the use of condoms, despite the ravages of HIV/Aids in the poor world. (Mail & Guardian readers who defend this on the grounds that it aims to prevent sexual immorality should remember that contraception within marriage is also banned.) The church argues that it provides a quarter of Aids care in the developing world — but this does not clear it of the charge that it is promoting the spread of the disease. The Guardian points out that it would take “only a re-emphasis of doctrine, to stress that when a choice has to be made between two evils — the spread of fatal disease or the use of contraception — then the lesser evil should be chosen. Such a decision would have a transforming impact on the developing world.”
The cardinals’ conclave made a safe choice, but one that betrayed the clear majority of the faithful, now concentrated in South America and Africa. Progressive people, both Catholic and non-Catholic, can only hope that Ratzinger’s advanced age ensures a swift succession.
A political exercise?
Is there an attack on the independence of the courts and the separation of powers that underpins constitutional democracy, as the government pushes for laws to reorganise courts, create disciplinary procedures for judges and expand their training? Or is the controversy a healthy working out of structural tensions between branches of government?
The Constitution specifically provides for national legislation on these issues, and there is no fundamental dispute over the stated aims of the Bills — to rationalise the structure of the courts, doing away with apartheid relics such as the Boputhatswana division and introducing high courts in provinces that lack them; to improve the education of judicial officers, many of whom sorely need it; and to tighten up administration, which can be unconscionably lax. It is also generally acknowledged that existing mechanisms for holding judges and magistrates accountable for their conduct and performance are inadequate. Bits of the legislation have been batted around between the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, the Judicial Service Commission and Parliament for years.
But just as the process is given fresh impetus by a more energetic Ministry of Justice, contentiously revised drafts have landed with a thump in the middle of an extremely difficult debate about demographic transformation on the Bench. The drafts follow the African National Congress’s ill-conceived statement on the judiciary’s “collective mindset”, and the furore over the Hlophe report on racism in the Cape division. And some provisions do seem to erode the separation of powers. Ministerial discretion over appointments at the Justice College, and the suggestion that the judiciary requires outside help to discipline members, both seem to strike at independence. The suggestion of changes to Section 165 of the Constitution is deeply worrying. On the other hand, it is difficult to sympathise fully with judges who claim exemption from basic performance standards. Long delays and flimsy judgements are too common, and too seldom dealt with robustly by higher courts. Minister Brigitte Mabandla wants Parliament to begin considering the legislation in July, and her staff insist that last week’s colloquium, where several judges registered strong protests against aspects of the legislation, was an attempt to gauge their views in advance of publishing the drafts for comment.
But a meeting of judges, academics, and politicians to discuss the drafts just before their wider public release seemed almost designed for leaks — and for gauging political support. It looks as if the justice ministry is testing what it can get away with and for the Democratic Alliance’s Sheila Camerer to call it a “full frontal assault” on the independence of the judiciary seems, therefore, premature and overstated. We hope we are witnessing a political exercise, a push-pull between different centres of democratic power. And we believe the judiciary is up to the challenge.