When, during the Spanish Civil War in October 1937, General Emilio Mola was asked which of his four army columns would capture Madrid, he replied: "The Fifth Column." This was of course a reference to citizens inside the capital loyal to General Francisco Franco. Thus the term ‘Fifth Columnist' entered the political lexicon for the first time: a reference to members of the community with loyalties to a state or constitutional body determined to destroy it, who at the appropriate moment will undermine or strike against the order of which he or she appears to be part.

The weekend's revelations concerning Judge President John Hlophe suggest, on the face of it and given the unprecedented and appropriate response of the Constitutional Court bench, that one of our most senior judges is a sort of constitutional fifth columnist white-anting the twin and imperative notions of judicial independence and the separation of powers. This suggests that, sometimes the greatest threats to the survival of key national institutions come from within their own ranks and not from the ‘usual suspects' outside the institutional corridors of power.

On two previous occasions the Judicial Services' Commission has failed to take decisive action against this erring jurist, whose temperament, at the very least, is more reminiscent of a bull who has run out of china shops rather than the possessor of detached impartiality and the objective even-handedness which are the requisite hallmarks of those entrusted with high judicial office.

Not that Judge Hlophe, at this critical and fraught moment in South Africa's democratic history, is the only potential constitutional fifth columnist. The President of South Africa, himself, whose aloof detachment as an absentee landlord and political autism has attracted so much outrageous indignation from his suffering citizens, has been revealed as a stranger or manipulator of the truth. This much emerged during the first round of the Ginwala Commission hearings into the dismissal of Advocate Vusi Pikoli. But the stain of constitutional vandalism is not unfortunately confined to the national presidency and to a Judge President.

The president-in-waiting, Jacob Zuma, has already been processed through the criminal courts. As an indicted accused on four serious charges of corruption, racketeering and tax evasion, we face the spectacle of the next occupant of Tuynhuys and the Union Buildngs being in the criminal dock in the morning and being president of the country in the afternoon. Quite what signals this will transmit in terms of the rule of law and public accountability remains both bewilderingly unclear and overwhelmingly negative.

Then we have over 100 members of the National Assembly in Parliament, who at best were beneficiaries of the travelgate fraud on the taxpayers, or who at worst, were complicit in crimes of theft and fraud.

No wonder, in some ways, our country bleeds and despairs and hovers on the edge of a collective nervous breakdown: the shameful attacks, murders and criminal pillaging of foreign nationals is the most recent and potent example that the promise of ubuntu is corroded by a casual hypocrisy which the great philosopher Bertrand Russel described so well in one of his Sceptical Essays:

"We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach."

One of the reasons for our current malaise and one of the explanations why ‘the South African miracle' is fast fading, like a disappearing summer tan, is because of the assumption, since 1994 that the ruling party alone and exclusively possessed the moral high ground, based on the purity of its struggle against the evil of apartheid. There was an assumption, false as the past fourteen years have revealed, that the movement which carried the hopes and aspirations of oppressed people would, in government, conduct itself in a morally superior fashion.

In fact, the opposite has occurred. The ANC in government has not performed, after the onset of freedom, wonders of nobility and high-mindedness. Rather, envy, greed, intrigue, suspicion and corruption have jostled and clashed from the outset with the ethics of freedom, rectitude and selflessness - in most cases the former attributes overwhelming the latter.

But at this time of national crisis and confusion we can outline the seeds for a push-back and a recovery. It is encouraging, for example, that the Constitutional Court, including the Chief Justice are responsible for reporting the errant Judge Hlophe to the JSC. It is also noteworthy that critical voices like Kader Asmal and Pallo Jordan, who for too long ‘went along to get along' on such national policy blunders from AIDS to Zimbabwe, have now recovered their courage to speak out. Another straw in the wind is the national power crisis at ESKOM. This has forced the parastatal to reconsider its ruinous policy of racial purges and to re-engage the technicians and managers which the unthinking and blind ideology of transformation forced out in the first place.

But I do hope that it is now plain for the new leadership of the ANC to see the damage which has been visited on our country by the belief that the ruling party alone possessed the talent and the patriotic impulses to build up our new democracy and to maintain our physical and constitutional infrastructure. President Mbeki centralised all power, oppressed dissent and ignored the opposition. We are now paying a very high price for his ruinous self-belief and the exclusion from active citizenry of a significant segment of our country.

It is my hope, and there are perhaps some indicators, that the new ANC leadership will pull South Africa back from the brink. They need to cast the net wide. If the past few years - particularly the past six months - have revealed one thing, it is this: South Africa can no longer afford to see the constitutional opposition and minority communities as enemies and outsiders relegated to the sidelines as political "untouchables". Membership of the ANC is certainly no guarantor of effective and honest government.

Whatever the outcome of next year's general election, it is my hope that the government, the cabinet and the upper echelons of the public service will not be confined or limited to one party and dominated by one racial group. Our national crisis can only be resolved by ‘a government of all the talents'. When merit and public-mindedness, not race and party loyalty are included in the attributes for appointment to executive office, South Africa can again soar to the place it briefly occupied at home and in the world in 1994. If we do so, we will no longer be remembered for overcoming the demons of our past, but unable to meet the challenges of the present and of the future.

This is the text of a speech by Tony Leon MP, Democratic Alliance spokesperson on foreign affairs, delivered to the Mizrachi organisation, Cape Town June 2 2008. Issued by the Democratic Alliance

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