Faculty of Management Sciences
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Item Judicial review as an accountability mechanism in South Africa : a discourse on the Nkandla case(Durban University of Technology, 2022) Fagbadebo, Omololu; Dorasamy, NirmalaSeparation of powers among the three branches of government, in most Constitutional democracies, is a design to avert the tyranny of a personalized rule. With specific roles, in relationships characterized by separated but shared powers, each branch of government is a watchdog against the other in case of any abuse. In the South African governing system, the Constitution guarantees functional power relationships among the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary branches of the government. Nevertheless, the dominant party system, in practice, has weakened the legislative oversight and accountability powers to tame the excesses of the executive, contrary to the intendments of the drafters of the Constitution. Judicial review of the various legislative and executive actions, however, has created precedents that seek to reassert legislative capacity to hold the executive accountable. At one time or the other, the judiciary had indicted the legislature and the executive of dereliction of duties. Using primary and secondary data from judicial pronouncements, constitutional provisions, and other public documents, with extant literature, respectively, this paper reviewed the environment that prompted the activist posture of the South African judiciary. An entrenched culture of party loyalty and the incapacity of the legislature to enforce accountability have bolstered the need for assertive judicial review in ensuring accountability. The failure of the legislature to exercise its oversight power has provided the platform for the judiciary to rise as a formidable accountability instrument. Judicial independence, guaranteed by The Constitution, would continue to sustain the tenets of South African representative democracy.Item Interrogating the constitutional requisites for legislative oversight in the promotion of accountability and good governance in South Africa and Nigeria(SAGE Publications, 2019) Fagbadebo, OmololuAfrican Studies Association of India. This article interrogates the effectiveness of the requisites for constitutional provisions in respect of the promotion of accountability and good governance in South Africa and Nigeria. The article notes that the drafters of the Constitutions of the two countries made sufficient provisions for the regulation and control of the executive and legislative activities in a manner that could guarantee effective service delivery. These constitutional provisions, in line with the practices of their respective governing systems of the two countries, empower the legislature to hold the executive accountable. The article discovers that the lawmakers in the two countries lacked the capacity to harness the provisions for intended purposes. Using the elite theory for its analysis, the article argues that legislative oversight in South Africa and Nigeria is not as effective as envisaged in the constitutional provisions envisaged. This weakness has given rise to the worsening governance crises in the two countries in spite of their abundant economic and human resources. The article opines that the institutional structures of the political systems of the two countries, especially the dominant party phenomenon, coupled with the personal disposition of the political elites incapacitate the effective exercise of the oversight powers of legislatures in the two countries. The article, therefore, submits that the people of the two countries have to devise another means of holding their leaders accountable in the face of collaboration between the executive and the legislature to perpetuate impunity in the public space. Independent agencies should be more active in the exposure of unethical behaviours of the political elites, while the judiciary should be more independent in the dispensation of justice.