Crime #2

Blog post 2 , 2 August 2025

Crime winning is impossible without the corruption and the crippling of the criminal justice system. Corruption of these institutions is only possible when politicians allow it.

What?

We must amend the constitution to include a clause called the “Right to Honest Government”  in the bill of rights. This will state that all the positions which are critical to make sure that justice prevails (and that corruption does not) will need to be acceptable to the BOTH of the two largest political parties at the time they are appointed. Both of those parties will nominate candidates and either of them can veto a candidate. This means that the two parties who disagree most will approve of anyone successfully appointed.

These “guardians of Justice” positions include:-

The Public Protector

The NDPP

The head of SAPS

The head of the Hawks

The head of IPID

The IEC

The Constitutional Court Justices

The members of the Judicial Services Commission.

SARS commissioner

(and probably some other critical positions)

Why?

1) We are on the brink of becoming a gangster state. We cannot survive as a nation unless we fix our justice system and get on top of crime. To fix it from top to bottom is going to take a long time. The nexus between our current crime levels and the weakening of the justice system by certain politicians to protect themselves from prosecution is obvious.

2) No one political party can be trusted to appoint these people without bias. In every country in all times leaders have chosen people to head the justice system who will be pliant to their will and will not prosecute their friends but will prosecute their opponents. This problem is ancient – discussed extensively by Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations” (1776).

3) The loss of trust in the USA supreme court and all their top courts because of the political nature of its appointments is a case in point. Justices and Judges are subtitled according to who appointed them ("Judge xyz - a Biden appointee" etc ) whenever they give a judgement. This destroys faith in the system and may cause an actual lack of justice if the judges actually do what the politicians who appointed them wish them to.

4) We need a system where we do not rely on the good character of our leaders to appoint people in our best interest as citizens and not in their best interest.

5) These "guardians of justice" are not people who need to be politically aligned as they do not enact policy. In fact, they must not be.

6) We need to reduce the ability of the state to have unfettered power over the people. “Who will watch the watchers” is vary apposite. We can have endless layers of watchdogs, each watching the one below – but if they are all appointed by one group, one political party – they will never be unbiased.

7) The concept of arising at a just solution by finding a way to cause conflicted parties to agree on and accept the solution is old. Paul Kruger solved an inheritance dispute between two brothers by allowing one to divide the farm and the other to choose which half he wanted.

How?

1) Draw up the clause for the Bill of Rights part of the constitution and hold a referendum or simply pass it in parliament with an adequate majority.

2) Having a GNU as we do now is the best chance that we as citizens have to get this into the Constitution.

3) The nominations and hearings to select these people must be public and the vetoing party must supply public reasons for the veto.

Why not?

1) Whichever party is currently in power will not want to give up its power to appoint people who will rule in its favour.

 True - let us not, therefore wait for the next election when we may again have a single party with absolute power.

2) Theoretically, parties could deadlock and appoint no-one.

This is true, but would be hard to explain to their electorate, given the fact that we have many very able, honest and non- political candidates for these positions. This is why it is vital that the hearings are public and motivations for veto published.

Referendum

Please like this idea if you do.