ARTICLE: THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT IMPLIES THAT CULTURAL TRADITION FOUNDED IN HISTORY FINDS NO RECOGNITION IN THE CONSTITUTION
2016-08-16
The renaming of streets and places must be handled with the greatest sensitivity. All South Africans should feel that they and their cultures are fully represented in street and place names. The Constitution declares that South Africa belongs to us all, united in our diversity.
The recent Constitutional Court judgment in City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality v AfriForum regarding the renaming of streets in Pretoria shows how important it is for all sides to deal with contentious issues arising from our deeply divided past with the greatest sensitivity. The judgment has implications that far transcend the question of geographic place names.
The medical profession is amongst the most altruistic of career paths. There is a commonplace understanding that becoming a doctor involves dedicating one’s life to the passion for saving the lives of others. The true extent of the dedication required is however a lesser known reality. Public health care practitioners face rigorous working hours rendered unlawfully exploitive in most other sectors. Young medical graduates bear the bulk of this burden, obliged to deal with these despotic working conditions in their two-year internship and further year of mandatory community service in order to complete their qualification.
There should be no doubt about origins, intentions and consequences of the Expropriation Bill that President Zuma is about to sign into law.
Much has recently been made of reports that Egypt has overtaken South Africa as Africa’s second largest economy and that we have now slipped to third place – with Nigeria in first place. All this has added to South Africa’s sense of national decline – after having prided ourselves for so long as being in an unassailable position as the continent’s largest economy. Commentators must now console South Africans with the reassurance that we are still the most “highly industrialised” economy in Africa.
The hapless Judge Mabel Jansen’s recently exposed comments on social media that black South Africans have a culture of rape were crass and offensive. Jansen commented inter alia that she had “yet to meet a black girl who was not raped by the age of 12” and that in black culture “a woman is there to pleasure them. Period. It is seen as an absolute right and a woman’s consent is not required.”
There is an eerie unreality about the debate that has followed Moody’s decision to retain South Africa’s rating at two notches above junk grade status (with a negative outlook).
World Press Freedom Day (3 May) gives us the opportunity to assess the freedom of our press in South Africa.
Workers’ Day provides us with an opportunity to assess the nation’s labour relations and the degree to which our economy is succeeding in its responsibility to provide jobs for all our people – and particularly for our youth. We are confronted with the reality that, according to a recently released Statistics SA report, The Social Profile of the Youth, 2009-2014, approximately three-quarters (3.4 million) of the more than five million unemployed South Africans in 2014 were youth (aged 15–34 years). This alarming statistic requires an honest introspection into South Africa’s current modus operandi in the labour arena and calls on us to confront the failures that are crippling our ability to create an inclusive and prosperous South Africa – particularly for our young people. There are four obstacles to solving the youth unemployment crisis.
Earlier this week the Minister of the Sport and Recreation, Fikile Mbalula, announced the imposition of sanctions against four of South Africa’s main sporting codes (Athletics South Africa, Cricket South Africa, Netball South Africa and South African Rugby) for not meeting the racial targets that they themselves had earlier accepted. He said that he had resolved “to revoke their privilege … to host and bid for major international tournaments” in South Africa.