Mohamed Ameen Dabhelia – 2017/03/13

Former Constitutional Court judge Zakariyyah Zak Yacoob‚ who has been a vocal critic of President Jacob Zuma‚ told Radio Islam that even though South Africa has its problems, he believes that the country still has a better administration than the United States of America.

Yacoob attributed this to the fact that in SA, everyone is respected and protected, among other things.

“We have freedom of the media in this country, freedom of speech and therefore all these matters are coming to light which are wonderful.”

He says this allows everyone to hold government structures and stakeholders to account, in order to work towards a better country.

“What happens in other countries when things are bad is that, the press is muzzled, the press doesn’t report on them and we have trouble for that reason.”

Yacoob says that the root cause of the downfall of the current government began when the ANC appointed Jacob Zuma.

“The ANC decided for its own reasons to make Jacob Zuma the president of the country in circumstances where he was accused of corruption and didn’t face the charges.”

He says that if you have a president who has corruption charges hanging over his head, ultimately all the ‘corrupt’ people will encircle him.

“How can you appoint a president who has corruption charges on his head, and expect a clean government?”

However, Yacoob claims that South Africa’s government is not as bad as people think; he says that a strong civil society is needed to hold the current government to account, in order to iron out the discrepancies.

“In the end, if we can organise hundreds of thousands of people to say this government is wrong, in the way in which we organised against apartheid, then the strong civil society will force the ANC to change.”

He says that there is no country in the world boasting a government that has been perfect all of the time.

(Edited by Hesley Harmse)