Attacks on the judiciary by politicians have become commonplace since 1994, but it is disturbing when leaders of the ruling alliance launch public broadsides against our courts. With the government on the back foot for aiding the escape of a fugitive president wanted for genocide and war crimes against his own people, both ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe and Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande publicly flayed our judges.Mantashe, in an interview with M-Net's Carte Blanche, singled out the Western Cape High Court and the Pretoria High Court, saying that their rulings were undermining the work of the government.''We know if it doesn't happen in the Western High Court it will happen in the North Gauteng [court] - those are the two benches where you always see that the narrative is totally negative and creates a contradiction," the ANC supremo reportedly said.The Pretoria High Court provoked the ruling party's ire by finding, correctly, that, as a signatory to the Rome Statute, South Africa was duty bound to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court.The Western Cape High Court apparently irritated the ruling party by finding that EFF leader Julius Malema's statement that the ANC government had killed miners at Marikana was not unparliamentary, leading Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande to declare that ''sections of the judiciary'' were "over-reaching".Nzimande and Mantashe - who once said that Constitutional Court judges were among the ''counter-revolutionary forces'' aligned against President Jacob Zuma - are playing a dangerous game. The Bashir debacle is entirely the responsibility of the government and the mess in parliament is not of the courts' making.The independence of critical state institutions has been undermined under Zuma's watch but the judiciary is one of South Africa's few remaining shining lights...