Top Tweets for #CR17Bankstatement

Dear South Africans, From Chambers to Sofas :Your Constitutional Rights were sealed in Chambers. Under the rule of law, all exercises of public power must remain transparent, reviewable, and accountable. That principle becomes even more important where private money intersects with the pursuit of public office. Political funding is never constitutionally neutral because it creates a direct relationship between financial influence and state power. It is therefore irrational to fund an individual’s campaign for the highest public office in the country and later invoke privacy once that individual assumes power. By voluntarily financing a bid for public office, donors knowingly enter the constitutional domain of governance, accountability, and public scrutiny. The relationship ceases to be purely private because it now carries potential implications for state decision-making and democratic integrity. This is precisely why Rule 53 matters. Rule 53 exists to ensure that where public power is exercised, the underlying record and reasons can be scrutinised. Its purpose is to prevent hidden governance and to ensure that legality is not insulated through secrecy or procedural ambiguity. Yet in the CR17 matter, the sealing of the bank statements appears to have been structured in a manner that avoided producing a clearly reviewable judicial decision and record. The result was that Rule 53 ,the ordinary constitutional mechanism designed to compel disclosure and accountability, became difficult to invoke effectively. That is the deeper constitutional concern. Once exercises of public power are arranged in ways that avoid producing reviewable records, the rule of law weakens because legality itself becomes difficult to test. Courts derive legitimacy from openness, reasons, and reviewability , not from secrecy conducted in chambers and shielded through administrative opacity. The issue, therefore, extends beyond party politics or campaign funding alone. The real constitutional danger is the emergence of governance structures where political power, financial influence, and procedural evasions converge while remaining insulated from ordinary mechanisms of review. In a constitutional democracy, legality can't operate through hidden processes. The rule of law demands that where money intersects with public power, transparency must prevail over secrecy. Congratulations to Judge President Ledwaba