abolished while he or she holds that office, and prohibits any reduction in judges’ salaries and allowances. While all these provisions should be repeated in the new Constitution, something more is needed, for the following reasons: • The provisions apply only to judges, not to magistrates or to the judicial officers who preside over specialised courts such as the Administrative Court. They should apply to all judicial officers. • The provisions have not prevented the Executive from providing judges with farms expropriated from commercial farmers and with houses and television sets obtained through the Reserve Bank’s “quasi-fiscal activities”. Judges who have accepted these gifts cannot be expected to rule impartially on the Government’s land redistribution programme or the legality of the Reserve Bank’s “quasi-fiscal activities”. The new constitution should mandate Parliament or the Judicial Service Commission to prepare a code of conduct for judges and all other judicial officers, and to ensure that it is strictly enforced. • There is nothing in the present Constitution that specifically requires the Executive to respect or enforce judgments and orders issued by the courts. As a result, the Executive has frequently ignored judgments given against it. The new constitution should contain provisions for Parliament to censure public officers who fail or refuse to comply with judgments, and perhaps should disqualify them from holding further public office. 4. Power to appoint Ministers, administrative officers and other members of the Executive Under the present Constitution, the President appoints Vice-Presidents, Ministers and Deputy Ministers. His discretion in doing so has been recently limited by the GPA: vice-presidential appointments must be made from nominees of his own party, and ministerial and deputy ministerial posts are allocated between the parties to the GPA in accordance with that Agreement. There is nothing wrong in principle with vesting the power to make these appointments in the President or whoever else is head of government under the new Constitution. The person in charge of the government must be able to appoint people to share political responsibility for running the country’s affairs. His or her discretion in making these appointments will always be limited or at least affected by political considerations, and it is debatable to what extent the Constitution should impose further limits. Under the present Constitution, Ministers must be Members of Parliament, and if they are not members when they are appointed they must somehow obtain a parliamentary seat within three months, so the President’s choice of Ministers is restricted to people who are or can become members of the Legislature and are answerable to the Legislature. The same position prevails in most of our neighbouring countries, though South Africa allows two Ministers to be appointed from outside Parliament, Botswana four. If our new constitution were to allow any Ministers to be appointed from outside the Legislature then it would be desirable for their appointment to be subject to approval by the Legislature. All Ministers even if not members of the legislature must have the right to speak in Parliament and must be available to answer questions in Parliament to ensure their accountability. 40