‘Constitution not holy scripture’: Sisulu slams Lamola in yet another article

Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has taken aim at Ronald Lamola in response to the open letter the Justice Minister wrote on Friday.

Lamola slammed Sisulu’s criticism of the constitution and judiciary.

“Referring to judicial officers using crude racial tropes cannot pass off as a debate. Attacking the very institution that is [there] to uphold the constitution goes against the grain of everything that we wanted to change from before 1994,” Lamola said.

“Insinuating that judges who have assumed the high calling of judicial office in our democratic era are mentally colonised is a personal attack that cannot be condoned under any circumstances. In addition, calling any black person – whether a judge or not – a ‘house negro’, is insulting,” he added.

On Sunday, Sisulu responded to Lamola by reprimanding him for writing the open letter.

“You have taken the unusual step of addressing me, a colleague, in an open letter, something unheard of in the tradition of our movement, as far as I know. 

“This appears alarming since it seems to be a follow-up of the public statement issued by your department, which was all part of an equally unusual and disturbingly vicious public castigation of me since my attempt to draw public attention to one of the most fundamental issues South Africans should be discussing,” read the article on IOL.

She said the constitution is “human-made, historically contextualised document”.

Holy scripture

“It does set high standards for our democratic life together. But it is not holy scripture. Rather than seeing it as an untouchable, irreproachable holy relic, I see it as a living document, evolving with our own development. As such, it is open to discussion, debate, and critique,” Sisulu wrote.

She also said the justice system has failed the “poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalised, and the excluded” in South Africa.

“It has failed in its primary function regardless of how it may offend us to accept such,” she said.

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Citing the case between Vodacom and ‘Please Call Me’ inventor Nkosana Makate, Sisulu said that wealthy and well-connected people are favoured by the constitution.

“I do believe that our constitution far too often serves the few, the powerful, and the well-connected. It cannot be that resources become the determining factor between justice and injustice, right and wrong, moral and immoral.”

Sisulu ‘desperately’ wants to be president

ANC veteran Mavuso Msimang said, with the ANC set to elect new leadership in December, it was clear that Sisulu was campaigning for the governing party’s presidency once again as she did in 2017.

“It is behind the controversy that is currently raging… is the ambition of an individual who desperately wants to become the president of South Africa in the future. To this end, she is willing to use all means, fair and foul, to attain the objective,” Msimang said.

He also questioned the timing of Sisulu’s controversial remarks about the country’s constitution, political leadership, rule of law, and the judiciary.

“Its timing, given the then-impending conference of the ANC celebrating its 110th birthday in Polokwane, it was clear that releasing this article at this stage was bound to deepen the already existing divisions within the organisation.

“Secondly, the attack on the leadership, as in how the organisation is led, was just unprecedented [and] extraordinary.”

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Additional reporting by Thapelo Lekabe