On 22 May, the FW de Klerk Foundation made a submission to the Select Committee on Security and Justice of the National Council of Provinces on the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill (the Bill).
Proposed Hate Speech Bill Will Silence Democracy for All Issued By the FW de Klerk Foundation on 09/05/2023 The Hate Speech Bill 2018 –
On 25 December 2022, while most South Africans celebrated Christmas, news broke of a racial incident at the Maselspoort Resort and Conference Centre involving an
Celebrated annually on 24 September since 1994, Heritage Day recognises and celebrates the diversity of South Africa’s ‘Rainbow Nation’. Our Constitution assures South Africans’ rights
The trouble with political slogans is that they are meaningless. We have seen it with the communist and socialist policies, enacted in the name of the proletariat; the working class, and those who are exploited by the “capitalists”.
It is a great honour for me to address such an important and interesting conference at my old Alma Mater. The theme of the conference is as daunting as it is interesting – dealing as it does with ‘Reformation theology and its impact on world societies after 500 years’. I must point out at the outset that I am a lawyer and not a theologian – so offer the following comments with some trepidation.
The dust has settled a bit regarding the Constitutional Court’s ruling in the Gelyke Kanse (GK) case on Stellenbosch University’s (SU) Language Policy (read the full analysis of the case here). The implications of this ruling are relevant for SU and the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University (NWU Potch); and perhaps most importantly of all, for Afrikaans as a language of instruction in public schools.
On October 10, 2019, the Constitutional Court ruled in the case in which Gelyke Kanse (GK) asked that the 2016 Language Policy of the University of Stellenbosch (SU) be set aside because it is unconstitutional. GK’s application was essentially an appeal against the Western Cape High Court’s earlier ruling, and a request to bypass the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) and approach the Constitutional Court directly. This was allowed.
The overall verdict – with which all 10 judges agreed – was written by Judge Edwin Cameron (who was recently appointed new Chancellor of the SU). There are also two additional rulings, one by Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng and the other by Judge Johan Froneman, which provide additional perspectives.
In 1989 the American Academic, Francis Fukuyama, proclaimed that the “end of history” had arrived:
“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
