1. Introduction
According to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, it is suggested that the white population, as beneficiaries during the apartheid era, should now pay a special “wealth tax.” This tax is assumed to be used in assistance of the empowerment and upliftment of those who have been oppressed by apartheid, with the aim of establishing equality in South Africa. This essay will discuss the transformative nature of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa and its characteristics, and through this, the implementation of wealth tax as a policy will be analysed.
2. What is transformative constitutionalism?
South Africa’s constitution is widely acknowledged as a transformative constitution. Our constitution’s primary aim is to facilitate change in society, based on the values of ‘human dignity, achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms’ and ‘non-racialism and non-sexism’. According to Professor Karl Klare, transformative constitutionalism is a “long term project of constitutional enactment, interpretation, and enforcement committed to transforming a country’s political and social institutions and power relationships in a democratic, participatory and egalitarian direction.”
3. What are the characteristics of transformative constitutionalism?
3.1 Substantive equality
South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world, but the constitution’s transformative nature aims to eradicate this inequality. The constitution supports substantive equality with the focus on social reconstruction. Substantive equality takes into account that some groups have previously experienced disadvantage, and that measures should be put in place to right the wrongs of the past by bringing these groups on t...
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...gh tax levies. Tax payers who will be affected by this wealth tax may feel like they are being robbed blind. When tax payers believe that the tax system is unfair, they might start looking for loopholes – so-called tax avoidance. In order for this to stop, tax morality should come into play. Payers of wealth tax should believe that they are being good citizens when paying wealth tax.
6. Conclusion
South Africa is on a constitutional journey; a journey to rectify the mistakes of the past and move forward in a more equal society. Wealth tax will have the power to restrain the growing power of inherited wealth. Wealth tax, although a controversial topic, should be implemented in South Africa, as long as it is done so correctly. A policy on this tax should be implemented with the aim to make reparations in our unequal society and through this, redistribute wealth.
...f South African language and culture, acknowledgement of the racial oppression in South Africa, past and present, that it was wrong and positive action is required to make it right, and finally that all South Africans are legitimate and enjoy full moral equality (“About – DA”). In order for all this to be possible, the state must ensure it does not compromise the freedom of the individual (“About – DA”).
Failure to resist the consuetude of tyranny was seen in the apartheid regime that was allowed to rise in South Africa, “with its explicit policy promoting white supremacy” (Cooper 2002, 1). As a result of this establishment, non white Africans were forced to live separate and in poor conditions for years by the all white government. This yet again encumbered any chance for augmentation of self and society for the African people. While the rest of the world was creating mass transit and health care systems, Africa was being held down, it’s potential to develop as a state of power and influence,
In the book, No Future Without Forgiveness, it introduces that South Africa was one of a land that experienced the most profound apartheid and racial oppression. It stacked hundreds of years of oppression, hatred and killings between the blacks and whites. Fortunately, there are some great people helping South Africa out of the woods. The author of this book, Desmond Tutu, perfectly reconciled the conflict and contradiction in South Africa. Therefore, after reading this book, what I want to appeal is that people should have equal rights. Meanwhile, in this paper?s following analysis, I will discuss as the blacks, what unequal and cruel
Racism is never bound by culture, language, or even continents. It is an evil that spans the globe. The history of South Africa is of a culturally divided and fragmented society. The architects of apartheid took advantage of this splintered social order to create an institutionalized separation, dehumanization and enslavement of a people through laws and customs. However, freedom can be achieved when one voice has the courage to stand up against thousands, and inspires others to stand up for what is right and just. The ending of apartheid in South Africa allows people everywhere to never again accept a different definition of freedom depending on a classification imposed by another. South Africa has forged a bright future from the chains of the darkness of the heart – the darkness known as apartheid.
Apartheid was a dark time in the history of South Africa. The African National Congress played a major role in the breaking of Apartheid. Nelson Mandela played a critical role in bringing democracy to South Africa. This paper will show how the African National Congress was involved in the Anti-Apartheid movement and how the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela Changed the country as a whole.
In James DeFronzo’s book Revolution and Revolutionary Movements, the author depicts the apartheid system in South Africa and its political transformation. Through reading the ninth chapter of DeFronzo’s book, the reader can better understand the modifications made to the apartheid system and the causes for the rapid political transformation throughout 1959-1999.
Taxation, the government acquisition of property from the individual has mixed support in any Western democratic system. To make its way into the good will of the majority, taxation has surrounded itself with doctrines of justification. No law which lacks public approval or acquiescence is enforceable, and to gain such support it must address itself to our sense of correctness. This is particularly necessary for statutes authorizing the taking of private property. Sometimes depicted as ‘theft’ by those who are subject to taxation, the accusation is commonly based on the sentiment what do I get from it? However, one chooses to live in a democratic welfare state and to take up the services society has to offer the individual; the argument of free-will is combated here by the necessities of the individual. Often misunderstood by the tax-paying individual, taxation is not solely a legal obligation, but a social obligation as well; one has a duty to protect the weaker members of society in any welfare state.
...titude towards the effort of the TRC. The criticisms of the TRC mainly revealed the concern of whether the TRC could be adopted by individual South African people. The public hearings of gross human rights violations make an ambiguous effort at healing individual victims and subtly placed pressure on the victims to forgive the perpetrators who killed their loved one. The amnesty process sacrificed the victims‘ sense of justice to illustrate the big improvement of Ubuntu in South Africa. What’s more, the South Africa also did not perceive TRC to effectively relieve the intense conflict between black and white groups. South African, as the most multicultural, multilingual, and multiethnic countries in the world, had a unique condition of the road of solving the issue from the bloody and dark history of apartheid. The contribution of the TRC still needs a further study.
Petersson, Lennart. Post-Apartheid Southern Africa: Economic Challenges and Policies for the Future: Proceedings of the 16th Arne Ryde Symposium, 23-24 August 1996, Lund, Sweden. New York City: Routledge, 1998.
Coster, P., & Woolf, A. (Eds.).(2011). World book: South Africa’s Anti-Apartheid Movement, (pp. 56-57). Arcturus Publishers: Chicago.
John Dugard, Nicholas Haysom and Gilbert Marcus. (1992).The Last Years of Apartheid: Civil Liberties in South Africa. New York: Ford Foundation
According to the Freedom Charter of 1955, all people [of South Africa] shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring their families up in comfort and security. Attempting to follow in its footsteps, the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act of 1998 (abbreviated as the PIELA) aims to eradicate persistent post-Apartheid residential segregation by preventing the unlawful persecution of mostly black, impoverished renters and tenants who occupy land claimed by mostly white, wealthier landlords. Yet, upon examining its imperfect performance, one notes that it has failed to deliver on such a promise. Its sluggish redress of white-dominated land ownership makes such hopes for an egalitarian state where people of color live comfortably unrealistic. Socioeconomic, legal and statistical facts add to the racial discrimination that complicates this law’s enforcement of residential justice. Alone, the PIELA cannot counteract the white corporate, educational and financial complex of influence in South Africa. It is quantitatively and qualitatively difficult to defend so many marginalized people of color accused of outstanding debts by relatively powerful whites in court. Therefore, the PIELA law must join the just philosophies of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), public partnerships with microfinancial nonprofits and diversity training for judges, to effectively enable South Africans of color to avoid dependency on discriminatory corporate interests and inhabit affordable, comfortable homes. Reforming the PIELA with these policies will bring residential justice to South Africa.
The late Chief Justice Pius Langa wrote a report regarding the concept of transformative constitutionalism, his report make reference to defining what transformative constitutionalism is to help understand such a broad topic and ultimately the challenges that our country is faced to create an substantively equal society. Thus these challenges address what South Africans as well as what the government needs to fix in order to create and equal society and to fix the injustices of the past.
Our beloved Madiba once said: “My wish is that South Africans never give up on the belief in goodness, that they cherish that faith in human beings as a cornerstone of our democracy. The first value mentioned under the founding principles of our Constitution is that of human dignity. We accord persons dignity by assuming that they are good, that they share the human qualities we ascribe to ourselves. Historical enemies succeeded in negotiating a peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy exactly because we were prepared to accept the inherent capacity for goodness in the other.”
...ellent policies, 5) the Constitution had come into existence through the working together of various groups that had composed South Africa, 6) South Africa's political and economic institutions are well established, 7) and that South Africa is by far the most developed country in Africa. However, there are still avenues that can impede further progress, more so economically then politically. Primarily the lack of foreign investment, especially when South Africa's gold and diamond reserves are emptied as other parts of economy are not as developed. Secondly, the economic gap between whites and blacks that was stretched during the time of apartheid needs to be tightened or else it could become dangerous to the stability of the political system. However, due to the leadership of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s current government structure exists to solve these issues.