Title

  • Decolonization, compensation and constitutionalism: land, wealth and the sustainability of constitutionalism in post-apartheid South Africa

Creator

Published In

Date

  • 2018

Volume

  • 34

Issue

  • 3

Bibliographic Citation

  • Heinz Klug, Decolonization, compensation and constitutionalism: land, wealth and the sustainability of constitutionalism in post-apartheid South Africa, 34 S. Afr. J. Hum. Rights 469 (2018).

Abstract

  • This paper explores the relationship between the protection of property rights and the effort to embed constitutionalism in South Africa since 1994. While the question of land will be central to the paper, property must be understood more broadly to
    include government’s distributive efforts in the democratic era beginning with the Reconstruction and Development Programme through the provision of various social-grant programmes to the adoption of affirmative action, black economic empowerment and preferential government procurement rules. Finally, the paper will
    focus on the re-emergence of the demand for land. While I acknowledge that a number of factors might hinder or promote post-colonial constitutionalism – including legal education, the need for constitutional ideas to be articulated in indigenous
    languages and the extent of participation in the political process – the paper focuses on the underlying political economy of colonial and post-colonial society, including the legacies of continued inequality and exclusion, to explore whether a sustainable constitutionalism is possible.

Keywords

  • Constitutionalism; Constitution of the RSA; 1996; expropriation; land; land reform; property; restitution of land

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