South Africa is lucky to have the most exciting, innovative and progressive human rights document in the world and a willing and capable population enthusiastic to assist with the transformation process.
South Africa is a country comprising many cultures, aspirations, lifestyles, socio-economic conditions, religions, ideologies, institutional structures and peoples.
This complexity is its strength. Yet often, for reasons of bureaucratic ease, lack of resources, or simply well meant but poorly planned action, the vibrancy of South African life and its social systems are being extinguished.
Indigent legal systems are increasingly becoming subsumed by the conflicting paradigm of the common law. Indigent music and the traditional method of learning and developing music is being compromised by training young musicians from rural areas in a western notation which is inappropriate for their styles. And oral learning methods, which promote retentive memory, is undervalued in favour of literacy drives.
The next generation of rural South African women are leaving the public arena voluntarily as they drop out of school to look after their families following the early death of their parents from HIV/AIDS.
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THRU supports the human rights theory developed by Professor Costas Douzinas called an Ethical Approach to Human Rights. He points out that if one look at the law - judgements in cases and legislation - they do not really describe actual people, but legal "personalities". When lawyers talk of the "reasonable" person, for example, whom do they mean? No-one is reasonable all the time, yet the law tells us we have to be. To use art as an illustration, if a real personality can be depicted by a photograph then a legal personality would be a cubist painting where your eye was where your mouth should be and your nose upon your head! |
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Compare
these images of Picasso's wife Jacqueline Roque.
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Imagine protecting
human rights was like putting make-up on your face. If I, as a human rights
lawyer, used an image in the style of Picasso's cubist period, then what sort
of a mess would I leave? The poor person would have eye shadow on their forehead,
lipstick on their nose…hardly dignified. The law also has in-built assumptions
with regard to race, sex and class. So, for example, regardless of your actual
skin colour, the foundation applied would almost certainly be most suited to
a white skin.
You see, if we let
the law make assumptions about us and then act on these assumptions as though
they are truths, the application of the law will not achieve the protection
of our rights. In fact, depending on how far away from our actual personality
the legal personality is, "defending" our human rights along these
lines would actually result in a greater breach of our rights.
If you would like further details, or to discuss training or education programmes on human rights topics, please contact Helen Fernand on:
by telephone or fax on:
+27 (0)21 422 3841
or by post at:
transformative
human rights unit
(thru)
P O Box 15896
Vlaeberg 8018
Cape Town
Republic of South Africa
If you would like to make a donation to support THRU's work, please deposit it in THRU's Bank Account and forward the details to us in order that we can indicate our gratitude personally:
ABSA
Bank - Adderley Street Branch
Branch Code: 63 20 05
Account Number: 9119 4566 10
