What Casac has been doing during those ‘nine wasted years’
The Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution protects the constitution sometimes from the very people mandated to uphold it
It is perhaps no coincidence that the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution’s (Casac) 10 years of existence has largely coincided with the “nine wasted years” of the Zuma administration. The necessity for a progressive civil society organisation to defend and advance the foundations of our constitutional democracy was foremost in the minds of Casac’s pioneers over dinner at a restaurant in Adderley Street, Cape Town, in 2009 — the late Prof Kader Asmal, Geoff Budlender, Mamphela Ramphele and Richard Calland — as they anticipated the attacks on the independence of the judiciary and other bulwarks of the constitution.
As Casac was launched at Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia on September 17 2010, its inaugural chair, Sipho Pityana, said: “In the changing circumstances of our times, a conservative assault on the constitution from the very powerful in our society is raising its ugly head”. ..
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