SA’s Constitution must not be altered on a political whim
Our Constitution’s founding provisions cannot continue to be under-emphasised and under-appreciated
Calls to chop and change our Constitution amount to little more than spur-of-the-moment political knee jerks. If the calls are effected, they will be contrary to the rule of law and therefore void. South Africans should respect the Constitution as an inflexible statute meant to endure for generations. Section 1 of the Constitution, the "founding provisions", can, in a way, be described as the constitution of the Constitution. It provides the basis for the rest of the Constitution and can only be amended with a historically elusive, two-thirds majority in Parliament. Its provisions stipulate that SA is democratic, that our society must be nonracial and nonsexist, and that the Constitution, as well as the rule of law, is the supreme law of the land. And it is these provisions, among others, that inform the remainder of the Constitution. The Bill of Rights, which comes immediately after the founding provisions in the Constitution, is the most substantive brake on government power, seem...
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