Johannesburg – The Constitution will be reflected on next week when Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola hosts the National Conference on the Constitution from March 22 to 24, 2023, at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand, Gauteng.
Themed "Reflections on the Constitution: Rule of Law, Accountability, Social, and Economic Justice," the department says this will give the country an opportunity to reflect and have a dialogue on the past 25 years of the Constitution, nation-building, gender equality, youth economic empowerment, as well as issues of service delivery and social stability, to chart a way to build on the gains of democracy achieved.
"There has been a robust debate among South Africans as to whether the Constitution has really achieved what it was intended for or not," said a department statement.
The department said that the national conference intends to broaden the discourse on the Constitution and encourage members of the public to join and participate in the conversation on constitutionalism and the current state of democracy in the country.
Some of the focus areas in the programme include:
- Transforming and building an independent and resilient judiciary.
- Transforming and growing the economy as a constitutional imperative.
- Progress on land reform: restitution and distribution.
- Governance and electoral reform.
- Effectiveness of constitutional and independent statutory bodies in strengthening constitutional democracy.
"The conference will be attended by prominent figures of South African society, including academics, members of legislatures, constitutional and independent statutory bodies, mayors, political parties, youth, students, business leaders, religious leaders, legal fraternity, traditional leaders, media and others," added the department.
A widely debated topic will be land reform: restitution and distribution, as indicated by former Public works minister Patricia de Lille during a debate on the Expropriation Bill in a Parliamentary session last year, where she highlighted citing a land audit report, that 79% of South African land was in private ownership, 14% was owned by the state, and 7% was unaccounted for.
"Of the 14% owned by the state, this is divided between land owned by national government departments, provincial governments, and municipalities. The 2017 audit looking at land in private ownership found that individuals, companies and trusts own 90% of the land in our country," she said.
De Lille said that it was clear that the 1975 Expropriation Act cannot be continued as it was unconstitutional.
"The Expropriation Bill is an effort to replace the act with (legislation) that is constitutional and has been certified as such by the chief state law adviser and senior counsel."
"We must remember that still today, mainly people of colour live on the outskirts of our towns and cities, far away from economic opportunities, and do not own any land, thanks to the apartheid regime’s draconian laws," she said.
It is our responsibility to correct this historic injustice. These are the wrongs of our past that we have been working to remedy since the advent of South Africa’s democracy in 1994.
The Star