Pierre de Vos

Could the planned disbanding of the Scorpions successfully be challenged in the Constitutional Court? I was gently taken to task this morning by Paul Hoffman of the Centre for Constitutional Rights because I told the Mail & Guardian that I do not think there is a constitutional impediment to disbanding the Scorpions. It is clear […]

It was undeniably a bad week for police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi, but I would contend that it might have been an even worse week for President Thabo Mbeki. And that says a lot about the dire political straits in which our president finds himself. Of course, Selebi is in big trouble. Ironically it was […]

The (probably apocryphal) story is told that when Field Marshal Tito, president of the former Yugoslavia, was on his death bed, he heard the noise of thousands of voices outside his window and asked what was going on. “The people have come to say goodbye,” his aid is said to have replied. To which Tito […]

In June this year I wrote on my blog that Jacob Zuma was “fading fast” and that his presidential bid was “done for”. Now, less than a week before the Polokwane conference, it is perhaps appropriate to eat humble pie and admit that I was spectacularly wrong. Even if Thabo Mbeki manages to win — […]

For all those political junkies out there, I tried something new (for me, at least) on Wednesday night and blogged about President Thabo Mbeki’s interview with the SABC. After 10 minutes, the political editor of the SABC has only asked boring, sweetheart questions. The SABC would find it difficult to defend itself against claims that […]

Ronald Suresh Roberts again tries to argue that President Thabo Mbeki is neither an Aids denialist nor an Aids dissident, but merely a poor, misunderstood and maligned man with a deep passion for the lives of the vulnerable and the poor living with HIV. This comes in the wake of Mark Gevisser’s comments that Mbeki […]

Like Deon Maas, I am not a fan of satanism (or Christianity, for that matter). I would not mind the post-midnight gatherings, the listening to Cora Marie or Bles Bridges backward to hear messages of support, the incense and the candles, or the fetching young men in black looking morose and comically trying to feign […]

Who is to blame for the stress placed on the judiciary and the legal profession by the saga around Cape Judge President John Hlophe? The National Association for Democratic Lawyers (Nadel) seems to suggest that those who had criticised the original decision of the Judicial Services Commission not to pursue the complaint against Judge Hlophe […]

Reading the papers can be scary. Earlier this week, while attending a conference in The Hague, I read in the London Guardian about a country where the most popular political interviewer was fired from his job at a TV station because of pressure from the president of the country. For the liberals and the opposition […]

If I were the legal adviser to suspended National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli — and if my client had very deep pockets — I would immediately have lodged an application in the Constitutional Court challenging the legality of the inquiry now conducted by Frene Ginwala on behalf of President Thabo Mbeki. It seems […]