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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'We the people': the relationship between the South African Constitution and the ANC's transformation policies
Author:Stacey, RichardISNI
Year:2003
Periodical:Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies
Volume:30
Issue:2
Pages:133-148
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:constitutions
1996
equal opportunity
government policy
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0258934032000147264
Abstract:This paper examines current policies of social transformation in South Africa from a political theory point of view. As the transformation project purports to serve the ideal of equality, conceptions of equality that might justify or underwrite a policy of affirmative action are considered. On the basis of the political rhetoric behind South Africa's current affirmative action policy and the nature of the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, the paper argues that a very particular conception of equality lies at the heart of that policy, and that this conception is closely allied to communitarian and Rousseauean notions of the politics of the common good. The article submits that the question of how, if at all, this communitarian understanding of equality coheres with the rest of the South African legal order, and especially the right to equality enshrined in the Constitution, cannot be satisfactorily answered. The theoretical consistency of current affirmative action policies with the Constitution must therefore be doubted. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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