The continuing legal wrangle between the IEC and the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) flows directly from the unconstitutional decision of the apex court to sentence former president Jacob Zuma to jail without the benefit of a trial.
This conundrum was somehow self-created. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Leona Theron captures the judicial misstep as follows. “The main judgment, in my view, allows our law of contempt to be hijacked by the peculiar, and indeed, frustrating, facts of this case… the main judgment develops the law to meet the peculiarly frustrating circumstances of this case. It leaves in its wake law that is not only bad; but also, unconstitutional.”
The country has since paid dearly for this lack of judicial discernment. The social unrest arising out of this misjudgement caused a sense of outrage. It didn’t take long before this anger found expression in acts of vandalism. More than 200
