CONSTITUTIONAL COMMENTARY AND EVENTS
ARTICLES AND STATEMENTS
ARTICLE: SASSA – MUDDLING THROUGH AS THE POOR WAIT
The last few days have witnessed a SASSA fiasco on an unprecedented scale. Outright lies, half-truths, resignation of key personnel and a fumbling, rumbling and grumbling Minister trying to save herself – and not the almost 17 million grant beneficiaries – was the order.
Wide media coverage delivering blow-by-blow accounts of the unfolding crisis has elicited outrage, yet President Zuma has the temerity to ask Ministers and their spokespersons to stop talking about social grants. In an interview from Jakarta, Indonesia, he said, “I think Ministers should stop talking, including their spokespersons. I think the point has been made. The less we talk, the better”. He added in response to public outrage and a call for Minister Bathabile Dlamini to be sacked that, “there are people speaking as if the date has come and passed and that the Department has failed and the Minister has failed. But the date has not come”. President Zuma, unlike the almost 17 million grant beneficiaries, is assured of where his next meal will come from. He is assured – as is evidenced by the State Capture Report – of wealth accumulated for himself and his family, but a key voting bloc remains in limbo.
ARTICLE: SASSA SKIMMING THE POOR
In a series of barefaced lies, misinformation and distortions, the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) is yet again seeking refuge behind almost 17 million poor people, to cover up its inaction and connivance in giving effect to a Constitutional Court judgment rendering its contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) invalid and illegal.
ARTICLE: SASSA SKIMMING THE POOR
In a series of barefaced lies, misinformation and distortions, the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) is yet again seeking refuge behind almost 17 million poor people, to cover up its inaction and connivance in giving effect to a Constitutional Court judgment rendering its contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) invalid and illegal. In four weeks the Court’s grace period of 36 months for SASSA to get its house in order will come and go, and still we wait.
For most of the 17 million grant beneficiaries – and to the taxpayer – the elaborate but empty PowerPoint presentation made to the Portfolio Committee on Social Services in February 2017 is worthless, particularly when neither Minister Bathabile Dlamini nor the CEO of the agency, Thokozani Magwaza, bothered to show up at the meeting. The disregard for the poor is matched by the absence of accountability to the Legislature too.
PODCASTS
SUBMISSIONS
SPEECHES
EVENTS
STATEMENT: 2020 FW DE KLERK GOODWILL AWARD
The Board of Trustees of the FW de Klerk Foundation awarded the 2020 FW de Klerk Goodwill Award to Mr Moeletsi Mbeki.
The FW de Klerk Goodwill Award was established in 2010 to give recognition to individuals and organisations that have made extraordinary contributions to the promotion of goodwill between South Africans. Past winners include Pieter-Dirk Uys (2012), Studietrust (2013), Patrice Motsepe (2014), Afrika Tikkun (2015), Adv Thuli Madonsela and the Office of the Public Protector (2016), the coach and athlete team of Mrs Anna (Ans) Botha and Mr Wayde van Niekerk (2017), and Gift of the Givers (2018).
ARTICLE: THE ROAD TO 2 FEBRUARY 1990
The road to 2 February 1990 can be traced back to the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
In 1909 Britain decided to establish a union of its principal colonies in southern Africa along the lines of the successful federations that it had set up in Australia and Canada. The difference was that in the other dominions the white populations greatly outnumbered the indigenous peoples – while in South Africa they comprised less than 25% of the total population.
Nevertheless, in keeping with the colonial approach of the times, Britain gave white South Africans a monopoly of power in the newly established Union. It was an arrangement that, in a rapidly changing world, would eventually prove to be untenable.
For the next 40 years South Africa developed along the lines of the other Commonwealth dominions. Until the mid-fifties, in a continent that was still dominated by European powers, white minority rule in South Africa seemed unexceptional. In a world in which racial discrimination was still shockingly the rule, South Africa’s segregation policies elicited little criticism.
SPEECH: HOPE FOR THE FUTURE: ACHIEVING THE VISION IN THE CONSTITUTION
Last year the Wall Street Journal wrote that South Africa was at a crossroads, in 2018 the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement was too titled ‘South Africa at a Crossroads’, stressing the difficult economic and fiscal choices confronting the government, and in 2017 South Africa was once again at a crossroads according to a discussion held at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. No doubt an expert in something, somewhere, was saying we are at a crossroads the year before that, and again another ten years before that.
CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES
- Equality
- Non-racialism
- Gender Rights
- The Constitution
- The Rule of Law
- Multiparty Democracy
- Personal Rights
- Cultural, Religious and Language Rights
- Freedom of Expression and Political Rights
- Social and Economic Rights
- Property Rights
- Education
- Access To The Courts, Information And Fair Adminstration