President Jacob Zuma, for example, has said that the courts are usurping the government's role in setting policy.

Elsewhere on these pages we publish an edited extract of a speech given by former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson, at a workshop at the University of Cape Town this week.

Justice Chaskalson does not accept the stereotype that the courts - and the Constitutional Court in particular - have acted to blunt transformation.

He shows, by quoting from judgments, the progressive view taken by the court on a range of issues, from land reform to housing.

Justice Chaskalson's personal history allows him to speak with some authority on the roots of the constitution.

It was, he points out, the ANC that drove the adoption of a bill of rights in the constitution.

Justice Chaskalson also said: "The complaint about lack of transformation is sometimes directed at the retention of power by those who held it under apartheid. That charge cannot be made against the leadership of the judiciary. The chief justice, the deputy chief justice, the president of the Supreme Court of Appeal, the deputy president of the Supreme Court of Appeal and all the judges president of the high court are black; none held office under apartheid; all were appointed under the present constitution."

Remarks by Justice Chaskalson and other leading lights of South Africa's legal profession ought to be taken seriously.

The danger exists, however, that in a rising tide of populism, such voices will be ignored in favour of the sort of noise which attracts popular approval.

The campaign to politicise the judiciary and then turn it into a tool of the ruling party via the executive is gaining ground at a pace which ought to alarm those who believe in a constitutional state.

The danger we face is a dumbing down of our public discourse to a level where the lowest common denominator wins.

The Times