'Take politics out of courts'

Cape Town High Court judge Dennis Davis has sounded an alarm bell to his peers in the judiciary not to interfere in areas outside their competence.

Ruling against a DA application to force parliament to schedule an urgent debate on a vote of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma, Davis warned that the courts were increasingly being politicised.

He strongly rebuked politicians for running to the courts whenever they had a serious disagreement, saying this could lead to politicisation of the judiciary.

"Courts do not run the country; courts are there to police the constitutional boundaries," Davis said in his judgment.

"Courts can only tell parliament that it must work within the constitutional framework. there's an intrusion of judges into areas that are not in their competence," he said.

The application was brought by DA p arliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko against National Assembly Speaker Max Sisulu on Tuesday.

It sought to force Sisulu to allow the debate of a motion of no confidence against Zuma before parliament went into recess yesterday .

This was after Sisulu, in his capacity as chairman of the National Assembly's programming committee, failed to schedule the DA's motion because political parties represented on the committee had failed to find consensus on it.

Davis ruled that, though there was no measure of consensus in the committee that would allow the vote, the ANC could not use its majority to subvert the constitution, which also protected minority parties such as the DA.

He said the fact that the programming committee did not have deadlock-breaking mechanism could not be resolved in court.

Davis could not rule on whether Sisulu, who also chairs the committee, had used "residual powers" to trump a vote of no confidence, as alleged by Mazibuko.

He found that the court could not dictate to parliament, a principle enshrined in the constitutional doctrine of the separation of powers.

Mazibuko said last night her party would file an urgent appeal in the Constitutional Court.

"We have taken this decision on the basis that Judge Davis upheld the constitutional right that a motion of no confidence be debated in reasonable time frame and that the National Assembly's failure to do so has frustrated this right.

"Our legal team will file this urgent appeal as soon as possible. We will also request that the court rule that the debate be held as a matter of urgency," she said.

ANC chief whip Mathole Motshekga, a co-respondent in the matter, welcomed the ruling.

Motshekga - whose party once accused judges of being counter-revolutionary - said: "In his judgment, Judge Davis concurred with our view that, in the spirit of the principle of separation of powers, the judiciary cannot be expected to adjudicate on matters falling under the authority of parliament.

"We are concerned with the growing tendency by some parties to abuse the judiciary [by calling on] courts . to resolve the inter-party disagreements that should be resolved within parliament. It is irrational to expect courts to macro-manage parliament. The role of the courts is to ensure that institutions function within the boundaries of the constitution - a fact that these parties are clearly ignorant of," said Motshekga.

Sisulu's office also lauded Davis's judgment, saying parliament was already reviewing the rules governing the business of the programming committee.

"As the court indicated some weakness in our rules we welcome the guidance provided in the judgment. One of these is the absence of provisions for a deadlock-breaking mechanism in the programme committee. Another is the notion of reaching decisions by consensus. The court, however, highlighted that voting on whether or not issues such as the motion of no confidence be introduced for debate in the National Assembly was not the answer.

"A process to review the National Assembly rules is already under way and will be further prioritised following the observations of the court," his office said.

In a joint statement, the opposition sought to underplay the court defeat by pointing out that Davis's ruling had underscored shortcomings in the rules of the National Assembly.

Constitutional law expert Paul Hoffman disagreed with Davis's judgment, saying the rules of parliament were inconsistent with the constitution and needed to be revised.

He said this was something the Constitutional Court might be best placed to address.