P.A. Van Heusden wrote:
>You must be joking - its an outdated wreck. It offers virtually no useful
>rights (with the result that the US Supreme Court ties itself in knots
>trying to use the Constitution in the modern world), and offers at least
>one rather dubious one.
>P.S. Now, if you want to see a bill of rights, have a look at the one in
>the South African constitution -
>http://www.constitution.org.za/b34b/b34b_2.htm - with the exception of
>some annoyances (like the right to private property), its not bad for a
>capitalist constitution. The fact that it has made very little difference
>just shows you what constitutions are worth in a capitalist society.
I was about to write that the US Constitution at least had the virtue of being succinct when compared with South Africa's lumbering beast when I read the above. Give me the US Constitution any day. The South African Constitution guarantees just about everything including equality for gays and lesbians, but in its inability to deliver most of it, brings into disrepute even those "rights" which are fundamentally necessary such as freedom of speech, association etc. We're theoretically entitled to shelter, clean water, medical care and all sorts of wonderful things, but almost none of these are realisable for ordinary people. Interestingly enough, these days it's often not even practical to conduct a strike picket (theoretically protected under the Constitution) without the cops shooting or beating people or the employer interdicting picketers. No doubt they figure that if all the other paper rights are crap then so are workers' rights to organise. Only last week a land activist in Northern Province was dragged off by the cops and effectively detained without trial for the crime of addressing landless rural people. Some people argue that we in fact have fewer political freedoms now under our complicated and institutionalised and regulated constitutional regime than we did in the period of interregnum under FW de Klerk after 1990. In those days ongoing political action at least kept open the democratic space. Nobody had to ask a magistrate's permission to organise a march or a picket. Now we do or it's illegal.
So what do our hard won rights to political freedom really mean here if almost every other constitutional right remains a paper joke? Rather a few key democratic "tools" theoretically guaranteed as in the US Constitution (accepting that all rights are ultimately down to the current balance of forces) than a beautiful document which means precious little.
Russell