CONSTITUTIONAL VALUES Life Orientation

Grade 11

SOURCE: Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy, Department of Education (2001)

Introduction

South Africa's Constitution was the result of remarkably detailed and inclusive negotiations - that were carried out with an acute awareness of the injustices of the country's non-democratic past.

Introduction cont.

Human rights are given clear prominence in the Constitution

They feature in the Preamble with its stated

intention of establishing "a society based on democratic values, social justice and

fundamental human rights".

Ten Fundamental valuesThe ten fundamental values that feature in the Constitution characterise a culture based on democracy, human rights and peace.

1. Democracy•Democracy is at heart a society's means to engage critically with itself.

•The Constitution commits us to the establishment of a society based on "democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights

•Government is based on "the will of the people"; that we are responsible for our own destinies since, through the electoral process, we run our country and our public institutions.

2. Social Justice and Equity

•Without the implementation of social justice to correct the injustices of the past, reconciliation will be impossible to achieve.

•While the Constitution grants rights to freedom of expression and choice, it also establishes as a right the access to adequate housing, healthcare services, sufficient food and water, social security and, a basic education.

•Children, specifically, enjoy the right "to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health-care services and social services", and "to be protected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse or degradation". These rights apply to everyone under the age of eighteen -and that means the majority of learners in our schools

3. Equality

•The Constitution states that "everyone is equal before the law" and may not be unfairly discriminated against on the basis of "race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

• The state must strive towards giving all students the same access to resources and to personnel, and the same opportunities to realise their fullest potential. You have these rights, but that others have them as well.

•It is out of the Equality Clause in the Constitution that the values of tolerance and respect for others stem.

4. Non-Racism and Non-Sexism

•The history of humanity's march to freedom shows there is a significant difference between treating everyone as equals, and their being equal.

•This is the essence of the Constitution's emphasis on the value of "non- racialism and non-sexism".

•It outlines the challenge as being to strive towards practices that treat everybody as equal - and that work, specifically, towards redressing the imbalances of the past where people were oppressed or devalued because of their race or their gender.

•It is out of this value that the policies of affirmative action flow.

5. Ubuntu (Human Dignity)

•Ubuntu has a particularly important place in our value system for it derives specifically from African mores: "I am human because you are human."

•Equality might require us to put up with people who are different, non- sexism and non-racism might require us to rectify the inequities of the past, but ubuntu goes much further: it embodies the concept of mutual understanding and the active appreciation of the value of human difference.

•It requires you to know others if you are to know yourself, and if you are to understand your place – and others' - within a multicultural environment.

6. An Open Society

•The South African Constitution, as the supreme law, lays the "foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people".

•We have the right to "freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion";"freedom of expression", to "freedom of the press", to "freedom of artistic creativity", to "academic freedom and freedom of scientific research", to "freedom of assembly", and to "freedom of association".

•But as with all the values contained in the Constitution, our rights come with certain responsibilities: we may not exercise our rights to openness if they have the intention of inciting violence, propagandising war, or advocating hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion..

7. Accountability (Responsibility)

•If voting is the right of citizens to grant power, the need to hold the powerful to account is the responsibility that gives that right meaning.

•The provision of democratic tools in the Constitution, such as the vote, is to confirm and reinforce the values of "accountability, responsiveness and openness".

•More specifically, the Constitution says that public administration must be governed by the values and principles of professionalism, efficiency, equity, transparency, representivity and accountability.

•But "accountability" means, more than anything else, that we are all responsible for the advancement of our nation and that we are all responsible, too, to others in our society, for our individual behaviour.

8. The Rule of Law

•Without commonly accepted codes, the notion of accountability would lose meaning, and the light of the open society would begin to dim: the rule of law is as fundamental to the constitutional state as adherence to the Constitution itself.

•As a state, South Africa is founded on the value of "the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law".

•This means, literally, that the law is supreme; that there is a consensus of rules and regulations we must obey - and that we understand that if we do not, we are breaking the law of the land, and that the State is thus entitled to punish us.

9. Respect

•In the great contest of ideas that best symbolises enlightened humanity, respect in addition to intelligence or wit is probably the essential quality.

•As a value, "respect" is not explicitly defined in the Constitution, but it is implicit in the way the Bill of Rights governs not just the State's relationship with citizens, but citizens' relationships with each other: how can I respect you if you do not respect me? Respect is an essential precondition for communication, for teamwork, for productivity.

•In some of the most important international declarations that South Africa has ratified - they are therefore legally binding on our country - we have committed ourselves to the values of respect and responsibility.

10. Reconciliation

•Healing, and reconciling past differences, remains a difficult challenge in South Africa..

•It is a conception that is bound up in South Africa's official motto, "!ke e: /xarra //ke" - which means "Unity in Diversity". It means accepting each other through learning about interacting with each other

•Reconciliation values difference and diversity as the basis for unity; it means accepting that South Africa is made up of people and communities with very different cultures and traditions, and with very different experiences of what it means to be South African, experiences which have often been violent and conflictual