Speaking at a joint sitting of parliament to bid farewell to former chief justice Sandile Ngcobo and to welcome his successor, Mogoeng Mogoeng, Zuma said that the executive must be allowed to do its work without the threat of litigation hanging over its head.

"Our view is that the executive, as elected officials, has the sole discretion to decide policies for [the] government," he said.

"The executive must be allowed to conduct its administration and policy-making work as freely as it possibly can."

Zuma said he was aware that when he raised similar sentiments in the past they sparked a heated debate in the legal fraternity.

"In our view, the principle of separation of powers means that we should discourage the encroachment of one arm of the state on the terrain of another, and there must be no bias in this regard," he said.

"The powers conferred on the courts cannot be regarded as superior to the powers resulting from a mandate given by the people in a popular vote."

Mogoeng's nomination for the position of chief justice followed a controversy caused by Zuma's attempt to extend Ngcobo's five-year term.

Relying on a clause in the act that specifies the salaries and employment conditions of judges, Zuma triggered a legal row when he tried to get Ngcobo to stay on for another five years.

The Justice Alliance of SA, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies and the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution challenged in court hi s decision to extend Ngcobo's term on the grounds that the procedure he had used was flawed.

Ngcobo later declined Zuma's offer, electing to step down on August 14 - the date set for his retirement - shortly before the Constitutional Court ruled that the law used to extend his term was unconstitutional.

Mogoeng's nomination, however, did not go down well in legal circles. Many believed that Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke should have been the preferred candidate.

Zuma's warning comes after several ANC leaders - including secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, NEC member Ngoako Ramatlhodi and ANC Youth League president Julius Malema - rallied against what they perceived to be efforts by pressure groups to usurp the role of the government through the courts.

This is after interest groups threatened to institute a spate of legal challenges against government action and laws with which they disagreed, including the controversial Protection of Information Bill.

The bill was put on ice by the ANC following a public outcry.

Mantashe told the Sowetan newspaper at the height of the controversy over Mogoeng's nomination that "the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers must never be translated into hostility".

"You can't have the judiciary that seeks to arrest the functioning of the government," Mantashe said.

At a press conference shortly after Judge Colin Lamont's ruling declaring the phrase "Shoot the Boer" to be hate speech, Malema said the courts were being used to reintroduce apartheid through the back door.

Ngcobo told MPs yesterday that no arm of government could claim to be superior to any other.

"There is no branch that is superior to others in the service of the constitutional mission of the republic," he said.

Ngcobo said the courts did not earn public confidence by overturning or upholding legislation.

"It is earned by the judiciary demonstrating through its conduct and the well-reasoned judgments it produces that it holds the scales of justice evenly," he said.