Zille: If the constitution cannot, on its own, prevent us from becoming a failed state, what can?

The only guarantee of success is citizens who understand that they are personally responsible for preventing power abuse. These citizens understand the power of their vote and use it to protect the constitution and hold their leaders to account. Their leaders know that if they abuse power they will lose power. For a democracy to work, the politicians must fear the voters, not the other way around.

Voters in a consolidated democracy would never have allowed the rape of their prosecutorial authority. Developments like this show us how far we still have to go.

SHOOT: Zille would make an excellent president...

clipped from www.politicsweb.co.za Limpopo has been much in the news this week because of the endemic corruption that is the inevitable consequence of the power abuse inherent in the ANC's version of economic empowerment. It is legalised corruption. It enables the ANC in government to award tenders to the ANC in business to enrich the ANC's leaders. That is how companies, of which Julius Malema is a director or major shareholder, got tenders to the value of R140-million. Three bridges they constructed washed away in a matter of months. According to Sello Moloto, the former Premier of Limpopo, Malema "got those tenders by intimidating mayors and municipal managers that they would lose their jobs if they did not approve the appointments of his companies". Malema did this with the help of his ally Cassel Mathale who, as the ANC's Provincial Chairperson in Limpopo, had the power to appoint mayors and deploy municipal managers. Mathale himself is now Premier of this Province.