Zuma using apartheid tactics to avoid courts – judge

President Jacob Zuma is using a 'tyranny of the majority' to side-step the courts, especially in relation to the Public Protector's Nkandla report, former Constitutional Court Judge Johann Kriegler said at a discussion about the supremacy of the law hosted at Stellenbosch University. According to a Beeld report, Kriegler said Zuma's conduct in the Nkandla matter is akin to the apartheid government's attempts to side-step the courts. He said legislation is clear that the Public Protector must 'issue a report and that somebody must act on it'. 'But in this case you have the executive and the head of the executive...who don't implement the recommendations and who don't go to court to set it aside...but rather use the majority in Parliament to reject it.' He said this situation mirrors the apartheid government's attempt in 1952 to create a 'supreme court of Parliament' to side-step the then Appeal Division's rejection of legislation that took away coloured voters' rights. That government also used its majority in Parliament to reject a lawful decision made against them, Kriegler said.