Much has been said about this piece of legislation. Most recently, Planning Minister Trevor Manuel observed that South Africa, like any other country, needed to protect its official secrets and this was what the bill set out to do.

No one disagrees with this objective. What is troubling is the absence of protection for those who reveal such information when it is manifestly in the public interest.

If there were any doubts that this legislation was intended to punish the media, they were dispelled when it was voted through parliament by a cauldron of baying MPs while editors watched from the gallery.

It is possible to paint the gloss of democratic acceptability onto such legislation, but the true motive - an aggressive impatience with a prying, difficult, independent press - is not very well concealed.

Once the legislation is passed, the press will be less free and the MPs of the ruling party will cheer.

Even as press freedom diminishes, President Jacob Zuma is leading an extraordinary attack on the judiciary.

His speeches to parliament faultlessly include homage to the constitution.

But in an interview with The Star newspaper this week, his true motives came tumbling out.

"We don't want to review the Constitutional Court, we want to review its powers .... There are dissenting judgments which we read. You will find that the dissenting one has more logic than the one that enjoyed the majority. What do you do in that case?"

It is tempting to provide a simple answer: "You suck it up, Mr President, because that's how a democracy works."

But such answers will only fuel the populist suspicions of someone who clearly does not hold the finer points of democracy dear. Zuma's comment reveals that he truly believes he ought to be the final arbiter on what is or is not a "logical" judgment by the country's highest court.

Contrast this with what Manuel said last week: "We don't have laurels .... We are sitting on thorns. We can't mark time and we can't depend on the megaphone and the toyi-toyi."

Manuel's sentiments are noble, but they are not the dominant view in a party where populism has ascended to the apex.

Zuma has crushed Malema - an ally and a power-broker within the ANC - with little more than a shrug. How much colder will he be when he begins to destroy what he and his embattled party openly view as enemies in the press and the Constitutional Court?