ANC leaders made huge sacrifice for democracy
In the run-up to the election of 2019 and in the discourse relating to the controversial issue of expropriation of land without compensation issue, political parties on the extreme left of the political spectrum, such as the EFF and Black First Land First, are calling into question the legitimacy of the constitution.
They have gone as far as accusing former president Nelson Mandela and other liberation leaders of being sellouts.
According to reports in the media, both President Cyril Ramaphosa and his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, defended Mandela from populist accusations that he was a sellout during the Codesa and subsequent negotiations that resulted in a political settlement.
Such accusations are based on ignorance of the historical record, and are a patent insult to a very illustrious and courageous statesman, who together with, inter alia, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Govan Mbeki and Albie Sachs of the collective leadership of the ANC, made an inordinate sacrifice to bring about a nonracial constitutional dispensation involving an enforceable Bill of Rights.
It is necessary to consider the actual historical record.
The 1996 constitution was drafted by the Constitutional Assembly (CA), a body made up by the members of the National Assembly and the erstwhile Senate.
These persons were elected or appointed in terms of the interim constitution of 1994, following the first democratic election on April 27 1994.
This election gave them the democratic legitimacy to draft the final constitution.
The draft constitution produced by the CA was in compliance with the constitutional principles set out in the interim constitution.
For this purpose the draft was referred to the Constitutional Court.
On September 6 1996, the text was referred back to the CA for reconsideration because it did not fully comply with these principles.
The text was subsequently amended to comply.
The drafting and adoption of the constitution by the CA was intended to ensure that SA was governed in a democratic manner by a body that was legitimate in the eyes of all South Africans.
To this end, the process of drafting the text involved thousands of South Africans, in the largest public participation programme ever.
The legitimacy of the constitution was enhanced by the fact that the CA received more than two million submissions from ordinary members of the public who commented and made suggestions in relation to the working draft published in 1995.
After a period of nearly two years of intensive consultation and negotiation, the political parties represented in the CA formulated and adopted a text which constituted a synthesis of the ideas drawn from political parties, citizens and civil society organisations.
On December 10 1996 the Constitutional Court certified that the amended draft complied in every respect with the constitutional principles.
In a very real way this was a constitution sprung from the native soil of SA, which constitutional lawyers call an autochthonous or indigenous constitution.
The constitution’s pedigree of legitimacy cannot be doubted.
The constitution is a dynamic instrument that makes provision for transformation.
It has a progressive Bill of Rights that includes both civil and political rights as well as socio-economic rights, such the right of access to health, housing and education as well as affirmative action for advantage of people of colour.
SA is unfortunately one of the most unequal societies in the world and more than 20 million persons, mainly African people, live in dire poverty. This is, however, not the fault of the constitution and its Bill of Rights.
SA requires inspired and competent political leadership to address the problems of inequality, poverty and employment.
It is the inordinately challenging task of the new Ramaphosa administration to use the transformation potential of the constitution to bring about fundamental changes using inspired political leadership to address these problems that blight our society, and provide government characterised by integrity and competence.
SA is a country of infinite potential in both natural and human resources, which are capable of being used to bring about the transformation that is so urgently required.
In this regard our political leadership must seize the opportunity to make this country one in which social justice and economic equality prevail for all our people.
George Devenish, emeritus professor at UKZN and one of the scholars who assisted in drafting the interim constitution in 1993