THE STAR
Human rights lawyer George Bizos. File photo: Antoine de Ras
Johannesburg – South Africa finds itself at a crossroads, having to choose whether to take the road leading to the plundering of state resources, or the more difficult road which would lead the country to a place where its laws were respected and where those who broke them were acted against.
Sounding this warning, top human rights lawyer George Bizos also noted how many great South Africans from the “old guard” were reaching the end of their lives, leaving it up to young people to take the country forward.
Addressing professors, academics, philosophers and students at the School of Practical Philosophy in Joburg this week, Bizos said for South Africa to ensure that “morality can be reconciled with law and justice”, the country must have discussions to ensure that institutions were strengthened.
“We… stand at a crossroads. The one road, lined with securocrats, the plundering of the public purse and the attack on our democratic institutions, if taken, will create imbalance where law and justice cannot be reconciled with morality as our institutions and the very laws themselves will be perceived to be illegitimate.
“The other road is harder to follow; it requires all of us to work together with a common purpose, to do our job, and to ensure both individually and collectively that we bind ourselves to our just laws and act against those who break them,” said Bizos.
He said as “great trees continue to fall within our forests and where the old guard of moral authority wanes”, it was the youth who must build the country and ensure “that morality can be reconciled with law and justice”.
“To do so we must talk to one another and we must strengthen our institutions to ensure that our differences can be settled,” said Bizos.
Quoting Nobel Peace Prize laureate Albert Luthuli, Bizos said South Africans must always “give a charitable interpretation to each man’s conduct until such interpretation has been proved to be unsound”.
“But if the conduct of our countrymen is proved to be unsound, we must act to defend our laws to defend our institutions to ensure the legitimacy of our democratic project, for to do otherwise would be unjust. In this regard, the primary duty rests with the courts.”
South Africans could not continue “to defy the laws of our state”. “Despite some criticisms, in the main, we are governed by democratically elected representatives and have an independent judiciary, but this does not mean these institutions should not be constantly regulated by the citizenry.”
With democracy in 1994 and the drafting of first an interim constitution and then a final one which took effect in 1996, the people of South Africa sought to right the wrongs of the apartheid regime.
Central to the task of drafting a new constitution was the drafting of a Bill of Rights and the creation of the Constitutional Court to prevent the state and citizens from transgressing constitutionally protected rights.
Political Bureau
