While it may not be such a big deal to some, the new Constitutional Court opens on Monday December 15. It is just one part of the Constitutional Hill project, which will have cost about R460-million when completed in two years’ time.
The project is on the site of the Old Fort prison or Number Four, as older (black) South Africans used to call it.
According to the Johannesburg Development Agency’s Tshepo Nkosi, who took several journalists on a tour of the city, the building will have a natural air-conditioning system using the age-old technology of water running under the floors and, by some sophisticated manner, forcing cool air into the building.
For me the most beautiful part of the project is not the edifice or the fact that some famous names were once held within its confines. It is that it keeps the romantic story (the old Constitutional Court opened its doors on Valentine’s Day 1995) of how South Africa and its judiciary have led from the front the idea of a society where dignity and human rights mean something.
The court will be one of the first public buildings without a ring fence around it. The idea is to make it accessible — a passageway between downtrodden Hillbrow and businesslike Braamfontein. The windows of the court are at walkway level, allowing passersby to peep through the window and see justice being meted out. That, for me, is the master-stroke in the design.
The ceiling with glass is designed to create a shade that moves as the day progresses, creating an ambience of being under a tree. The symbolism here reminds one that in Africa ”courts” were held under trees and, no matter how much of the Roman-Dutch legal system we may have adopted, our roots are still in Africa.
Speaking of Africa, the court’s online library — said to be one of the largest in the world — will open to all African courts and academic institutions as part of emphasising the commitment to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. The rest of the world will have to pay a subscription fee to access the library.
The new building brings home the jurisprudential mantra as popularised by Lord Atkin: ”Justice is not a cloistered virtue: she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even though outspoken, comments of ordinary men.” For when ordinary men and women know and see justice happening before their eyes they will want to buy into, and then protect, the concept of access to justice.
It is such architecture that will give meaning to the phrase ”an open and democratic society” as espoused in our Constitution.
It is appropriate to remember too that the original Fort was built to protect what was a nascent Johannesburg’s allure — the gold-mining village a stone’s throw away from the court. Hopefully this new building will protect South Africa’s fledgling desire to live in a constitutional state based on human dignity, equality and freedom.
According to our tour guide, no one ever escaped from the Fort. Hopefully the new spirit that will envelope the precinct will never think about fleeing either. We will not let it.
In the previous Judgement Day column we decried the fact that the newly established equality courts had not received the attention and the publicity they deserved. We mentioned, by way of example, that the incident where a black Cape Town schoolgirl was allegedly assaulted and defecated upon by a white colleague should have gone to the equality court instead of being dealt with solely as a criminal matter.
So you can imagine our joy when, subsequent to the column, we read that the matter has now been taken to such a court.