South
Africa celebrates its Human Rights Day as a divided society. How we see each
other puts the meaning of humans to the test. The founders of our constitutional order committed us to a society anchored on fundamental human
rights. Being human comes with rights. Rights specify entitlement and
confer power. The status of being human implies the inalienability of human
rights. Wherever humanity is found, the universality of rights obtains. Unless
violated, rights are assumed. The concept of human rights democratises human
dignity. This context liquidates the pursuit of rights for exclusive categories
or types of humans generally following race, creed, colour, and, lately, sexual
orientation.  

The
1996 Constitution fundamentally reshaped our society, acknowledging our
troubled past. This legal document made human rights an integral part of our
sovereign existence, ensuring equality for all South Africans and extending its
influence to every facet of our lives. 

 

The
entrenchment of human rights in the Constitution and the obligation of state
organs to respect, promote, protect, and fulfil them create a legal framework
no legal person can bypass. The state is not only responsible for ensuring
social and economic justice, human dignity, equality, and non-racialism, but it
is also a weighty obligation that all must ensure human rights accrue to all people. 

 

Celebrated
on a day when the brutality of state power was unleashed on people for simply
protesting to be treated equally, RSA Human Rights Day happens in a context
where a resurgence of some being equal to others looks unabated. The
sophistication of the opposition to majority rule complex to rewire the
constitutional order to have distinct ‘minority rights’ for a ‘western
community on the Southern tip of Africa’ and ‘other tribes’ is indicative of
inherent problems with the universal character of human rights. A
Verwoedean separate development wave choked by the moral legitimacy and authority of non-racialism and human rights, struggles
to resurrect itself as an appendage of a growing global rightwing wave.

 

While
the Bill of Rights recognises property rights, including on property acquired
through forced removals and state-sponsored dispossession, it also provides for
restoration of title where dispossession was a means of acquisition. The
essence of rights is to establish title and claim to unleash compensation and
restitution dispensation with the pursuit of social justice as the supporting
substrate. The human rights character of society, including the values
underpinning the lived experience of the dominant, is influenced by those near the political establishment; this makes discourse on property
rights conform to reigning property relations.


Equal
to the land rights issue is the right to cultural self-expression, with
language being the most potent currency to guarantee freedom of expression.
Without vitiating the infrastructure arguments in favour of insisting on dual
medium schools, the existence of single medium schools is a matter the
Constitution expects the state to respect, promote, protect, and fulfil. That non-state
actors litigate this for its continuity is an anomaly. Within a context and
firmament of non-racialism, language rights are a matter of national interest as
they express constitutional order.

The
Human Rights Commission reports produced to protect the democratic order should
be dusted, and recommendations therein mainstreamed to facilitate healing
divisions of the past. To enable context-inspired human rights education
programs, the state is expected to act in a way that reflects the nature of an
emerging polity anchored on human dignity. There is an urgent need for
evidence-based reporting on structural violations of the Bill of Human Rights
provisions to anchor the inner logic of human rights. It should be doctrinal to
live a human rights-based life. The best way to ensure that rights are
guaranteed is to appreciate the inconvenience of the wrongs that could prevail
in the absence of rights. Rights can, therefore, not exist outside of human experience.