Religion apt in Constitution
It is ironic that the integrity of the Constitution is hinged on its separation from religion when it is religion, and specifically the Christian religion, that forms the foundation of our Constitution (” Religious sentiments can’t be allowed to override our Constitution“).
All rights are based on the inalienable dignity of human beings. The Constitution provides many rights: to equality; freedom from slavery; even the right to life. But a close reading of the Constitution will show that the Constitution acknowledges the inalienable dignity of all human beings and only provides for the right to have such dignity respected. This is no trivial detail. It is only because we must respect human beings that they have rights. The rights articulate the ways in which we are to respect them.
Why should we respect human beings? Why do human beings have inalienable dignity? A recurrent theme from Enlightenment and secular post-Enlightenment philosophy says that, as products of the natural world, human beings are value-neutral. It is only by virtue of their rationality that human beings have value and are able to value other things.
We consider two implications in this world view. Firstly, nonrational human beings (human beings with atypical cognitive development) are value-neutral; and secondly, rational human beings impose value; and just as they can choose to impose value on a value-neutral world, they can choose not to impose value. These are necessary implications in any philosophy that excludes God and religion.
On what basis then does our “liberal” and “progressive” Constitution acknowledge the inalienable dignity of all human beings? On what basis does our Constitution recognise value in all human beings, which are simply products of the natural world?
Our Constitution has to admit that it is on none other than the Judeo-Christian idea that all human beings are created in the image and likeness of God – a nonhuman valuer – that human beings have inalienable dignity, and from this flows all other rights. Nonrational human beings place theories such as John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice at odds with modern-day Constitutions that recognise the inalienable dignity of even the nonrational.
Suggesting that religion enters the discourse as a necessary supplement to an inadequate justice system, which relies purely on the secular world view, is very different to allowing “religious sentiments … to override our Constitution”. – Wade Seale, Cape Town
– Religion is transformative and has a fundamental impact on how we think, feel and act. If our religious commitment is genuine, it ought to exert this influence, otherwise there would be no content to our claim that we belong to this or that religion. This would be true whether our religious sentiments were held privately or made public.
Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng is therefore within his rights to bring his religious convictions to bear on his complex task of ensuring that the Constitution is morally just. The chief justice is not out to “Christianise” the country. His appeal is for all religions to provide a steady moral foundation to our laws, for all religions agree on fundamental moral issues.
Our Constitution is not based on some objective moral standard. It reflects the moral sensibilities of society. It puts the individual at the centre by acknowledging as rights practices such as homosexuality and abortion, which are condemned by most mainstream and African traditional religions.
But it is still religion that lies at the base of our Constitution. According to this religion, it is not the law but the sovereignty of the individual that the Constitution must uphold. We need not shudder at the thought of religious sentiment overriding the Constitution. It already has.
The Albie Sachs judgment quoted fails to acknowledge that judges have long been “placed in intolerable positions” for operating within a legal system that bows to the shifting moral whims of society and that some of the rights enshrined in our Constitution are “highly disputed” in South Africa. Sachs saves us from the tyranny of religious sentiments, only to cast us to the wolves of the educated opinion of the Constitutional Court.
What the chief justice is attempting to do is to arrest the madness of a legal framework that puts the individual at the centre and by so doing offers no objective standard for administering justice. This system is flawed because, ironically, all it succeeds in doing is to grant the individual the right to self-destruct. – Lungelo Ncede, Mdantsane
Reset land clock? You must be smoking your socks
Ikwezi editor Bennie Bunsee proposes that we press the reset button for land ownership to 1651, which makes for some curious dynamics, especially with reference to the Khoi and the San’s land rights.
I am slightly perplexed as to why such an Africanist would use white liberal definitions for them (“Mngxitama is at the forefront of a new era“).
Maybe while the whiteys of the Western Cape are being driven off the beaches of Sandy Bay to return the land to its rightful owners, Economic Freedom Fighter Andile Mngxitama will secure the tender to bus the “economic refugees” back to their “rightful place” in the Eastern Cape.
And what shall we do about pre-Mfecane land rights? I am sure Swaziland’s King Mswati III would be interested in expanding his pathetic fiefdom.
Where can I get a copy of Ikwezi? I need to check the classifieds. I could do with some good acid in my life. – Wallace Mayne, Edenvale
– It seems Bunsee did not understand what I wrote. My letter did not suggest that what Andile Mngxitama wrote was “objectionable”; on the contrary it expressed the hope that Mngxitama would pursue the same issue in Parliament.
I merely recalled Desmond Tutu’s hint that the land issue is more complex than Mngxitama’s letter to Richard Branson suggests, and appealed for it to be dealt with “honestly, creatively, compassionately – and urgently”. (Does Bunsee think we should dispense with honesty, creativity, compassion and urgency in these matters? Does he think militancy is sufficient?) Tutu’s question was not a gesture at appeasement; it was a facing of stark reality.
To insist, as Bunsee does, that it is a mainly racial issue is to overlook the fact that even if the racial allocation is entirely reversed – that is, even when all the land in this country is held by black South Africans – the overwhelming majority of the population will still be landless (and mostly black by virtue of simple demographics) unless we change entirely the system of land ownership. The number of landless people living in Zimbabwe today, even after Mugabe’s seizure of land without compensation, is evidence of this.
What the Mail & Guardian edited out of my original letter was a reference to Chief Seattle’s pronouncement that, rationally, people belong to the land, and not vice versa. It is a view that reflects how the Khoi and San and many other African people apparently saw the land issue, a view that is more rational and ethically defensible than current notions of private ownership of land, regardless of who the private owners are, and to what racial group or nationality they align themselves.
What precisely did I write that Bunsee considers “absurd”? He does not say. I share his distaste for Doris Smith’s response. — John Brodrick, Johannesburg
Israel can’t give in when under attack
I find it strange that Alon Liel, who served his government as an ambassador, should now present arguments that could be interpreted as being harmful to his own country (“Israel’s persistence in occupying Palestine will be its undoing“).
He welcomes the apparent reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas and sees this as a step towards a “durable and comprehensive peace.” How? He must be aware that the object of the formation of these two Palestinian entities was the obliteration of Israel. It is certainly spelled out that way in the Hamas Charter, which has not been officially abrogated despite spoken denials to the contrary. I have yet to see any official statements from Palestinian leaders recognising Israel or offering to cease their attacks. In Palestinian schools, media and from Islamic pulpits hatred is inculcated, terrorists with the blood of Israelis, men, women and children, on their hands are welcomed back upon their release from Israeli imprisonment as heroes and almost sanctified. Why should Israel recognise states that deny her very right to existence?
Liel opines that Israel has no desire to end the so-called military occupation. Why should she, when confronted by people as described above? She has frequently offered territory in exchange for a cessation of hostilities, only to be rebuffed. She unilaterally withdrew all her troops and settlers from Gaza in the face of strong political dissent at home, abandoning a thriving export industry and infrastructure.
We know exactly how the Gazans responded – with more than 10 000 missiles launched at civilian settlements in Israel proper over eight years, and then they complained bitterly when the Israeli army retaliated.
Israel and its Jews are miniscule in comparison with the Arab world. She has been attacked time and again and suffered accordingly. She cannot afford to ever let her guard down and if the Arabs are sincere in wanting to make peace they will have to act very convincingly. – Don Krausz, Johannesburg