Twenty-three years ago on Wednesday April 27, 1994, we held our first democratic, non-racial elections.
Tomorrow on Freedom Day, we will again celebrate that profound shift in the history of our country.
As then president Nelson Mandela said one year later, in his 1995 Freedom Day speech: “If any one day marked the crossing of the divide from a past of conflict and division to the possibility of unity and peace; from inequality to equality; from a history of oppression to a future of freedom, it is April 27, 1994.”
That was so, he said, because it was the day that: “You, the people, took your destiny into your own hands. You decided that nothing would prevent you from exercising your hard-won right to elect a government of your choice. Your patience, your discipline, your single-minded purposefulness have become a legend throughout the world. You won this respect because you made the simple but profound statement that the time had come for the people to govern.”
From that first democratic election, South Africa inherited the instruments to make laws to undo our past and to guard our democracy.
We chose a democracy in which the constitution was the supreme law. This was a decisive break with the past when Parliament was supreme and enacted a series of laws to entrench apartheid and earlier forms of minority rule.
In our democratic South Africa, ushered in by the April 1994 election, the constitution provides the legal basis for the existence of our democratic state, sets out the rights and duties of citizens and defines the structure and obligations of our government.
The constitution sets out the functioning, composition and responsibilities of Parliament and the legislatures. These have been at the forefront of developing tools to fashion the better life for all envisaged in the constitution. This has happened through providing opportunities for society, in all its different configurations, to influence policy and the implementation of policy.
The more than 1 000 laws passed by Parliament since 1994 have not been mere tinkering with what was already on the statute books. The laws of our democracy have aimed to unshackle us from the legacy of our discriminatory and unequal past.
They have been intended to create the possibility of improving the living and working conditions of millions of people. The birth of our democracy has not been easy, however, and it is apparent that there are no short cuts to rebuilding South Africa into the country to which we aspire, in which the rights and freedoms of the constitution are fully realised.
So, it has been most appropriate that, in the second decade of our democracy, Parliament and the legislatures have initiated a closer, independent scrutiny of the implementation and impact of the laws of our democracy.
In January 2016, the Speakers’ Forum, a structure of Parliament and the nine provincial legislatures, appointed 17 South Africans from diverse backgrounds to the High Level Panel on Key Legislation and the Acceleration of Fundamental Change. The panel’s specific mandate is to assess the implementation of key laws, passed since 1994, and to make recommendations about these laws and their application.
Have the laws of our democracy helped or hindered us in realising the kind of society envisaged in our constitution?
What are the gaps? Are there too many laws? Are too many of them too complicated? These questions have guided the work of the panel as it proceeded to implement its task.
The panel earmarked about 100 laws for special consideration and grouped them into three main focus areas:
* Poverty, unemployment and the equitable distribution of wealth.
* Land reform, sustainable livelihoods and rural development and security of tenure.
* Social cohesion and nation-building.
We also embarked on a countrywide listening exercise.
This included holding a series of public hearings in all nine provinces, round-table discussions with experts, academics and civil society organisations in particular fields and inviting written submissions from the public.
The last of the provincial public hearings – in Limpopo and North West – were in March and the deadline for written submissions was the end of March.
Familiar problems glowed and flared up at all the provincial public hearings.
At some, veld-fire-like alleged perversions of important social programmes and laws were related to and shocked the panel.
Alongside, though, through all the hearings flowed respect for the constitution and a determination that the institutions of our democracy and our state system function.
We are scheduled to hand over our final report and recommendations to the Speakers’ Forum in August when it will also be launched in the media.
It is a daunting task but we intend to do justice to the great honour and responsibility entrusted in the panel.