Government entrusted with job of making things work

One of President Jacob Zuma's favourite dodges when faced with an issue on which he would prefer not to take a position is to say: "We must talk about this matter."

He is getting a little better about asserting a view as he gets closer to the Mangaung challenge and he begins to work out who is friend and who, like Julius Malema, is unequivocally foe.

But there remains a tendency across government to avoid the hard issues by proposing some future debate.

What usually happens next is the presentation of a bill or a green paper for public discussion, which immediately narrows further debate from the level of concept to specifics, as happened with the Protection of State Information Bill.

Politicians seem to assume that, like them, everyone out there in what most consider the real world has infinite time available to talk about what the government could, should or might do.

This was brought to mind again when Dennis Davis had Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Jeff Radebe on his Judge For Yourself television show on Sunday to discuss the executive's current assault on the independence of the judiciary - and, in particular, the Constitutional Court.

Radebe argued in the show that the people - that's you and me and the person sitting next to you -- should get involved in the debate about the future of the Constitutional Court. Fair enough.

But in defending Zuma's assertion that the system needs to be reviewed because minority judgments are sometimes more logical than the binding majority rulings of the 11 judges in green, he said people should read both before they speak.

People really don't know how the judicial system works, he complained.

Just how detached is he from the real world around him?

People don't know how banks, jet engines or combine harvesters work. A complex modern society can only function with huge levels of delegation and such monitoring as individuals feel necessary for their own peace of mind.

Everyone creates their own matrix of monitors, which is likely to include their own social networks, television and radio, newspapers and experts they trust.

Dare we ask how many companion majority and minority judgments of the Constitutional Court Zuma has read?

Or Radebe himself, for that matter. I'll wager that the president delegated that to someone he trusts and is acting upon that person's advice. People in the real world worry about keeping their jobs, raising their children and paying the rent or mortgage.

They look forward to shopping for a new shirt or skirt, they follow the lives of celebrities in South Africa and abroad, they train for their Saturday sport or study the form of their athletic surrogates, and they party in the style they find most appropriate.

They don't want to read court judgments so they can check on their government - and they shouldn't have to.

One rand in every four that we collectively produce goes to pay for a well-run state, including generous salaries for the politicians and their mandarins.

We don't expect them to make things, move them or sell them.

We give them lots of money, great physical comfort and ample back-up that we don't have ourselves because we want them to make sure things work in accordance with the constitution we all revere.

But most of all, we give them our trust.

We need the government to govern while we man the economy on which everything depends.

And, because we don't have the time they have to ponder all these issues, we need to know that they will do it in our best interest and not in their own.

One anchor of the relationship we need to have is the constitution.

The ground rules it lays for our society were crafted over years in two rounds of negotiations among mostly clever people who worked on the project virtually full-time. Now we hear it needs to be reviewed and revised. But we are not hearing that from the people, most of them still among us, who wrote the original.

We are hearing it from politicians and people like Julius Malema, who have an obvious personal interest in lifting the constraints it has placed on the abuse of power.

We are hearing it from people who find the constitution inconvenient.

Many of the ordinary people who Mbeki liked to call "the ruled" have lost faith in those he called "the rulers".

That - and not inadequate individual knowledge of the issues - is why there are so many questions about the government's plans, including those for the constitution.

Does Cyril Ramaphosa think we need to revise the constitution, I wonder?

• Brendan Boyle is editor of the Daily Dispatch