On behalf of the Government and the people of South Africa I wish to welcome our distinguished guests from the Middle Temple, including the learned justices from the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the Court of Appeal and High Court of England and Wales for sponsoring this occasion.
We are particularly pleased that the United Kingdom (UK) justices and the inaugural World Conference of Constitutional Justice in the very city of Cape Town where you have converged today. More than 100 chief justices and jurists from across the globe gathered here to reflect on Constitutional Justice and its influence on the development of global jurisprudence on human rights. We are thankful that the United Kingdom had sent a sizeable delegation to that important conference.
I addressed the conference at the time when the world was reeling under deep recession and in my address requested the judiciary to be part of the global efforts to reverse the negative economic climate which had a devastating effect on the economies of the world, especially on developed countries already ravaged by poverty and disease.
The world had since triumphed over the financial woes and is on the path to full recovery, but the battle to create a better world in which all people live in peace and prosperity, free from hunger and disease is yet to be won. This is a fight our Constitution seeks to overcome.
Our Constitution and legal framework provide the tools to change the loves of our people.
In his paper “Lessons from South Africa “Cassa Sunstein, an American Legal Scholar had this to say: “Some Constitutions are preservative: they seek to maintain existing practices, to ensure things do not get worse. By contrast, some constitutions are transformative: they set out certain aspirations that are emphatically understood as a challenge to longstanding practices. They are defined in opposition to these practices. The South African Constitution is the world’s leading example of a transformative constitution”
The social and economic rights were deliberately included in our Constitution because the crafters of our Constitution, mandated by the people of South Africa, foresaw that a Constitution that secured only “negative” liberties, without the material conditions to make their enjoyment real, would be hollow in a country whose past was plagued by inequality and dispossession.
We have, by adopting a Constitution with enforceable socio-economic rights, moved into unchartered territory, driven by the courage to undo the injustices of the past and the will to change peoples’ lives, mindful of the fact that the judiciary and jurists did not have precedence to rely on. The courts had to invoke judicial activism guided by the evolving constitutional jurisprudence to ensure that that rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution are enjoyed by all. As you can all attest, the value based judgements of our courts, in particular the Constitutional Court, continue to be a point of reference to most foreign judiciaries.
We as government remain committed to the independence of the judiciary and the Rule of Law which are crucial for the sustenance of our hard-fought democracy for which many laid their lives.
I wish you well in your deliberations and trust that you will find some quality time, during your stay in this beautiful country, to explore some of the country’s attractions including legacy sites arising from the recent 2010 FIFA World Cup Soccer spectacle.
