The FW de Klerk Foundation takes pleasure in presenting its annual Human Rights Report Card indicating where, in our opinion, South Africa has been making progress with regard to human rights and where it has been regressing.

2021 marks 30 years since CODESA and a constitutional era underpinned by the values of human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms; non-racialism and non-sexism; supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law; and a multi-party democracy resulting in government that is accountable, responsive and transparent.

As a result, South Africa is without doubt a better place to call home. However, even though it is a functioning multi-party democracy, extreme levels of corruption as well as the growing failure within South Africa to fully appreciate and adhere to all of the aforementioned constitutional values – especially those of accountability, responsiveness and openness, but also non-racialism and non-sexism – is having a direct impact on the realisation of human rights and freedoms.

These fundamental rights – as with constitutional values – are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible, meaning that the failure to adhere to one will continue to affect the realisation of other rights going forward into 2021.