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Home > South Africa: The courts, accountability and participatory democracy

Contributor [1]
Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - 03:00
Categories: 
Human rights [2]
Issue Number: 
500 [3]
Article-Summary: 

'Quite obviously, the first job of the courts is to enforce the Constitution and the rights which it contains. A person whose home has been destroyed and who has nowhere she can legally live, has no access to housing and is denied one of the most fundamental necessities of life. A court cannot fold its arms and say that this is bad luck, it is the consequence of apartheid, and one day things may change. The question is not whether the court should do something. Rather, it is what the court sh...read more [4]

'Quite obviously, the first job of the courts is to enforce the Constitution and the rights which it contains. A person whose home has been destroyed and who has nowhere she can legally live, has no access to housing and is denied one of the most fundamental necessities of life. A court cannot fold its arms and say that this is bad luck, it is the consequence of apartheid, and one day things may change. The question is not whether the court should do something. Rather, it is what the court should do.' - Advocate Geoff Budlender, the Second Irene Grootboom Memorial Lecture (2010) in Salt River, 11 October 2010.

Category: 
Governance [5]
Oldurl: 
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category.php/rights/67704 [6]
Country: 
South Africa [7]

Source URL: https://www.pambazuka.org/node/65989

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