What ConCourt gave our democracy in the past 30 years

It has given us the scope and content of our human rights in policies and law

- NKOSIKHULULE NYEMBEZI

THE 30th anniversary celebrations of the Constitutional Court's existence remind us of a lesson we have long since learned but have not yet sufficiently practised. The lesson is grounded in principle and experience.

The principle is that we accept that the Constitution tells us that universal adult suffrage, a national common voters' roll, regular elections and a multiparty system of democratic government, to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness are some of the values on which our state is founded.

Our Constitutional Court has done excellently in giving us the scope and content of our human rights in the policies and laws passed by legislative bodies, such as in the 2006 African Christian Democratic Party case where it found that the right to stand for public office and the right to vote in free and fair multi-party elections "form the high water mark of democracy."

It gave us human rights vocabulary and terminology identical to its judicial authority, such as in the 1999 August case permitting prisoners to vote where it found that the universality of the franchise is important not only for nationhood and democracy, but also because "the vote of each and every citizen is a badge of dignity and of personhood," as "quite literally, it says that everybody counts." It gave us an aversion to domination and abuse of power by not imposing itself on lower courts and other government branches.

It gave us a human rights culture that is kindly reluctant to become obsolete, as it did in the 2020 New Unity Movement case that opened space for independent candidates to contest national and provincial elections along with political parties.

It gave us the tools to withstand a divisive and exclusionary world of party politics. It ruled that the right to vote and the right to stand for public office "are not dependent upon membership of, and support by a political party. They are equally available to all adult citizens."