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| Title: | Reconstructing South Africa's constitution: how not to do it |
| Author: | Martin, Robert |
| Year: | 1989 |
| Periodical: | Lesotho Law Journal: A Journal of Law and Development |
| Volume: | 5 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 189-196 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | constitutions constitutional reform |
| Abstract: | In vol. 3, no. 1 (1987) of the 'Lesotho Law Journal', a special issue on constitutional and other matters concerning South Africa and Namibia, R. Seidman and S. Pheko each present their ideas on the kind of constitution a postapartheid, liberated South Africa should have. The present author criticizes them both for their 'unabashedly partisan points of view'. Pheko, in arguing that the Republic of South Africa is not an independent State but a colony, is creating a legal basis for denying citizenship to whites in postapartheid South Africa, in line with his commitment to the political philosophy of the PAC. Seidman, who writes as if the ANC were already the government, sees a postapartheid South Africa in which one dominant and omniscient party will use the power of the State to transform economic and social relations. Both Pheko and Seidman have written ideology, not analysis. They have confused constitutions and manifestos. According to the present author, a new constitution must address the reality of postapartheid South Africa and derive from a concrete assessment of the actual, existing conditions. Two principles should guide the process of constitutional reconstruction: the constitution should be workable, and democratic. Ref. |