The Pros And Cons Of Transformative Constitutionalism

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Introduction:
In a speech that Archbishop Desmond Tutu presented in 2011, he raised an argument that the white people of South Africa should pay a special tax to symbolically serve to acknowledge and to compensate for the benefits they enjoyed in the past, in the Apartheid system. In accordance with the Transformative Constitution and the South African Constitution, it would be unjust to put these taxes in place for white people to pay, as a policy of our government. This Constitution’s goal is to transform our country into a non-prejudicial, equal society. By implementing such a law, it would contradict what our Constitution is trying to achieve. We should question whether this possible argument would be justifiable or not in order to fix our past and make up for what the black people lost and what effects it would have on the future generations of South Africa.
What is Transformative Constitutionalism?
Transformative Constitutionalism has many different understandings and no single definition. To break it up and look it at simply, the Oxford English Dictionary is a source of reference here.to ‘transform’ means to “completely change the appearance or character of something, especially so that it is better”.¹Therefore in this case, transformative constitutionalism means that the constitution must change its character for the better. To collectively describe it, the Constitution of South Africa has one goal for our country and that is to “heal the wounds of the past and guide us to a better future.”² To explain this further, our past of inequality, strife and injustice must be understood and left behind by fixing our now known mistakes. This will then lead us to the better future characterised by an equal, democratic society in whi...

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...ld be quite piffling, maybe 1 percent of their stock exchange holdings. It’s nothing. But it could have helped... maybe building new homes, and that would have been an extraordinary symbol of their readiness.”9
Conclusion:
In conclusion I do not agree with the statement that Archbishop Tutu made in his speech (Stellenbosch University, August 2011) that the white people of South Africa should pay a special tax to acknowledge and to compensate for the benefits they enjoyed during the Apartheid era. As discussed above, it is unconstitutional to implement such a law as it is unfair discrimination on the grounds of race and colour. Therefore the wealth tax should not be imposed on the white population of our country. Instead, we should use transformative constitutionalism to make change in the country for the better and to step away from inequality and discrimination.

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