Cape Town - Justice and Correctional Affairs Minister Ronald Lamola has said that victims of evictions across South Africa will soon have access to Legal Aid services in a bid by the State to provide greater access to justice for all.
He was delivering the keynote address at a Constitutional Rights Conference in Cape Town to mark 25 years since South Africa’s Constitution came into effect.
“We will soon be expanding the mandate of Legal Aid South Africa to also offer legal services for land justice to the victims of evictions in the various parts of our country and to protect the most vulnerable within our society. This will happen from this financial year,” Lamola said.
In March last year, the department announced plans to transfer the Land Rights Management Facility, housed within the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, to Legal Aid SA.
The South African Constitution was adopted by the Constitutional Assembly on May 8, 1996 and certified by the Constitutional Court in October 1996. On December 10, 1996, former president Nelson Mandela signed the Constitution into law and it came into effect on February 4,1997.
Former Constitutional Court justice Johann Kriegler, who was on the bench of the Constitutional Court that determined the constitutionality of the Constitution, said 25 years was an appropriate stage to take stock of how the country had lived with it.
“A constitution is a compilation of words on paper. It means nothing if it is not put into practice. It is only the constitution for the people to the extent that it is actually implemented,” he said.
Women’s Legal Centre director Seehaam Samaai said the Constitution was a transformative framework for the achievement of socio-economic rights and the eradication of poverty and inequality.
Conference programme facilitator Judge Daniel Thulare said the most important task for political leaders was to equip themselves to be functionally literate on the Constitution, because this would help them deal with the issues that affect society.