Transformative Constitutionalism

- Justice Pius Langa1

Prestige Lecture delivered at
Stellenbosch University on 9
October 2006.
_________________________________

Introduction
Both the Constitutional Court2 and other courts3 view the
Constitution as transformative. The previous Chief Justice has
written that a ‘commitment ... to transform our society...lies at the
heart of the new constitutional order.’4 It is clear that the notion of
transformation has played and will play a vital role in interpreting
the Constitution. The main purpose of this address is to determine
what barriers exist to the achievement of that transformation.

What is transformative constitutionalism

Before I attempt to analyse the problems that transformative
constitutionalism faces in South Africa, it is necessary to say what I
understand the concept to mean. Unfortunately, there is no single

1 Chief Justice of the Republic of South Africa.

2 See for example S v Makwanyane and Another 1995 (3) SA 391 (CC); 1995 (6) BCLR 665 (CC) at para 262 (‘What the
Constitution expressly aspires to do is to provide a transition from these grossly unacceptable features of the past to
a conspicuously contrasting ... future’.); Du Plessis and Others v De Klerk and Another 1996 (3) SA 850 (CC); 1996 (5)
BCLR 658 (CC) at para 157 (The Constitution ‘is a document that seeks to transform the status quo ante into a new
order’.)
3 See for example Rates Action Group v City of Cape Town 2004 (12) BCLR 1328 (C) at para 100 (Budlender AJ)(‘Ours is
a transformative constitution. Justice Scalia of the US Supreme Court has said that “the whole purpose of a
constitution, old or new . . . is to impede change or pejoratively put “to obstruct modernity” ... Whatever the
position may be in the USA or other countries, that is not the purpose of our Constitution. Our Constitution
provides a mandate, a framework and to some extent a blueprint for the transformation of our society from its racist
and unequal past to a society in which all can live with dignity.’ (references omitted)); City of Johannesburg v Rand
Properties (Pty) Ltd and Others 2006 (6) BCLR 728 (W) at paras 51-52 (Jajbhay J)(‘Our Constitution encompasses a
transformative provision. As such, the State cannot be a passive bystander in shaping the society in which individuals
can fully enjoy their rights....[T]he full transformative power of the rights in the Bill of Rights will only be realised
when they are interpreted with reference to the specific social and economic context prevalent in the country as a
whole, and the social and economic context within which the applicant now finds itself in particular.’)
4 Soobramoney v Minister of Health, KwaZulu-Natal 1998 (1) SA 765 (CC); 1997 (12) BCLR 1696 (CC) at para 8.

1
accepted definition. The current Deputy Chief Justice has said in
this regard: ‘the meaning of transformation in juridicial terms is as
highly contested as it is difficult to formulate.’5 It is perhaps in
keeping with the spirit of transformation that there is no single
stable understanding of transformative constitutionalism.

There must, however, be agreement at any rate on some basis for an

understanding of transformative constitutionalism. I would suggest
that the Epilogue, also known as the postamble, to the interim
Constitution provides that basis. The Epilogue describes the
Constitution as providing:

a historic bridge between the past of a deeply divided

society characterised by strife, conflict, untold suffering
and injustice, and a future founded on the recognition of
human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence and
development opportunities for all South Africans,
irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex.6

This is a magnificent goal for a Constitution: to heal the wounds of

the past and guide us to a better future. For me, this is the core
idea of transformative constitutionalism: that we must change. But
how must we change? How does the society onEQUAL the other side
TREATES of
SHOULD BE
the bridge differ from where we stand today? TREATED equally.
FORMAL EQUALITY

Firstly, the new society is one based on substantive equality. unequal shall be
Writing in the South African Journal of Human Rights in 1998, treated unequally
Albertyn and Goldblatt make the point that the movement from the
one side of this bridge to the other will

require a complete reconstruction of the state and

society, including a redistribution of power and resources
along egalitarian lines. The challenge of achieving
equality within this transformation project involves the woman entry in army
eradication of systemic forms of domination and material
disadvantage based on race, gender, class and other
grounds of inequality. It also entails the development of

5 D Moseneke ‘The Fourth Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture: Transformative Adjudication’ (2002) 18 SAJHR 309 at
315.
6 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 200 of 1993.

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 opportunities which allow people to realise their full
human potential within positive social relationships.7

Transformation then is a social and an economic revolution. South

Africa at persent is having to contend with unequal and insufficient
access to housing, food, water, healthcare and electricity. As
former Chief Justice Chaskalson wrote in Soobramoney, ‘[f]or as
long as these conditions continue to exist that aspiration [that is, of
substantive equality] will have a hollow ring.’8 The provision of
services to all and the levelling of the economic playing fields that
were so drastically skewed by the apartheid system must be
absolutely central to any concept of transformative
constitutionalism. 9
Transformation in this sense does not only
involve the fulfilment of socio-economic rights, but also the
provision of greater access to education and opportunities through
various mechanisms, including affirmative action measures.10

The objective – a truly equal society

In this sense then, the establishment of a truly equal society and the
provision of basic socio-economic rights to all are a necessary part
of transformation. That is, however, not the whole story. And this
leads me to the second part and this is the transformation of the
legal culture.

7 C Albertyn & B Goldblatt ‘Facing the Challenge of Transformation: Difficulties in the Development of an
Indigenous Jurisprudence of Equality’ (1998) 14 SAJHR 248 at 249.
8 Soobramoney (supra n 2) at para 8.
9 See City of Johannesburg (supra n 2) at paras 51-52.
10 See Van Rooyen and Others v S and Others 2002 (8) BCLR 810 (CC) at para 50 (Chaskalson CJ)(‘[T]ransformation
involves not only changes in the legal order, but also changes in the composition of the institutions of society, which
prior to 1994 where largely under the control of whites and, in particular, white men.’); Minister of Finance and Another
v Van Heerden 2004 (11) BCLR 1125 (CC) at para 142 (Sachs J)(‘The substantive approach [to equality], on the other
hand, requires that the test for constitutionality is not whether the measure concerned treats all affected by it in
identical fashion. Rather it focuses on whether it serves to advance or retard the equal enjoyment in practice of the
rights and freedoms that are promised by the Constitution but have not already been achieved. It roots itself in a
transformative constitutional philosophy which acknowledges that there are patterns of systemic advantage and
disadvantage based on race and gender that need expressly to be faced up to and overcome if equality is to be
achieved. In this respect, the context in which the measure operates, the structures of advantage and disadvantage it
deals with, the impact it has on those affected by it and its overall effect in helping to achieve a society based on
equality, non-racialism and non-sexism, become the important signifiers.)

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It was Ettienne Mureinik who pointed out that the true shift from
apartheid to post-apartheid South Africa is a move from ‘a culture of
authority’ to

a culture of justification – a culture in which every

exercise of power is expected to be justified; in which
the leadership given by government rests on the cogency
of the case offered in defence of its decisions, not the
fear inspired by the force of its command. The new order
must be a community built on persuasion, not coercion.11

The Constitution demands that all decisions be capable of being

substantively defended in terms of the rights and values that it
enshrines. It is no longer sufficient for judges to rely on the say-so
of parliament or technical readings of legislation as providing
justifications for their decisions. Under a transformative
constitution judges bear the ultimate responsibility to justify their
decisions not only by reference to authority, but by reference to
ideas and values.

This approach to adjudication requires an acceptance of the politics

of law. There is no longer place for assertions that the law can be
kept isolated from politics. While they are not the same, they are
inherently and necessarily linked. At the same time, transformative
adjudication requires judges to acknowledge the effect of what has
been referred to elsewhere as the ‘personal, intellectual, moral or
intellectual preconceptions’12 on their decision-making. We all enter
any decision with our own baggage, both on technical legal issues
and on broader social issues. While the policy under apartheid legal
culture was to deny these influences on decision-making, our
constitutional legal culture requires that we expressly accept and
embrace the role that our own beliefs, opinions and ideas play in our
decisions. This is vital if respect for court decisions is to flow from
the honesty and cogency of the reasons given for them rather than
the authority with which they are given.

So far I have referred to two basic ideas of transformation:

economic transformation and a change in legal culture. Some

11 E Mureinik ‘A Bridge to Where? Introducing the Interim Bill of Rights’ (1994) 10 SAJHR 31 at 32.
12 Moseneke (supra n 4) at 317.

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critical scholars have offered a third conception that builds on, but
also goes beyond the first two.13 For them, the traditional metaphor
of a bridge is misleading as it seems to suggest that transformation
is a temporary event, that at some point we will reach the other side
of the bridge. Transformation then ends because we have reached
our desired destination. According to Andre van der Walt, ‘[i]n this Change itself
vision of transformation there is no longer room for imagining that can change
things could be different, that there might be further options and
more complex alternatives to the two places between which we
have chosen to choose.’14 What is contended is that we should
instead view the bridge of the interim Constitution as a space
between an unstable past and an uncertain future. There is no
preference for one side over the other, rather, the value of the bridge
lies in remaining on it, crossing it over and over to remember,
change and imagine new and better ways of being.

On that view, transformation is not a temporary phenomenon that

ends when we all have equal access to resources and basic services
and when lawyers and judges embrace a culture of justification.
Transformation is a permanent ideal, a way of looking at the world
that creates a space in which dialogue and contestation are truly
possible, in which new ways of being are constantly explored and
created, accepted and rejected and in which change is
unpredictable but the idea of change is constant. This is perhaps
the ultimate vision of a transformative, rather than a transitional
constitution. This is a perspective that sees the Constitution as not
transformative because of its peculiar historical position or its
particular socio-economic goals but because it envisions a society
that will always be open to change and contestation, a society that
will always be defined by transformation.

This conception of transformation reminds me of the old Nissan

slogan: ‘Life’s a journey. Enjoy the ride.’ What the slogan tells us is
that we should enjoy the driving itself rather than seeing it merely

13 See for example H Botha ‘Metaphoric Reasoning and Transformative Constitutionalism (Part 1)’ (2002) TSAR
612; H Botha ‘Metaphoric Reasoning and Transformative Constitutionalism (Part 2)’ (2003) TSAR 20; W le Roux
‘Bridges, Clearings and Labyrinths: The Architectural Framing of Post-Apartheid Constitutionalism’ (2004) 19 SAPL
629; J van der Walt Law and Sacrifice (2005)
14 A van der Walt ‘Dancing with Codes – Protecting, Developing and Deconstructing Property Rights in a
Constitutional State’ (2001) 118 SALJ 258 at 296.

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as a means to arrive at a destination. What Van der Walt is telling us
is that we should promote and sustain transformation itself, rather
than view it merely as a means to construct a new society.

Challenges
Let me now, finally, turn to the main theme of this address: the
challenges facing transformative constitutionalism in South Africa.
Many of the challenges are inter-related. Taken together they
create a substantial impediment to the realisation of our
constitutional dream. My list is by no means conclusive. There are
many others and many more that will arise only in the future.
However, these are to my mind the most pressing obstacles at the
moment.

Access to Equal Justice

I have already mentioned that one of the central tenets of
transformative constitutionalism is a commitment to substantive
equality and improving socio-economic conditions. It is no surprise
then that perhaps the biggest obstacle to attaining a truly
transformative constitutionalism is the continuing disparities of
wealth and power that pervade our country. I do not, however, wish
to focus on that aspect, we are all well aware of the extent and
seriousness of these problems. I prefer to confine myself to one
specific symptom of this inequality: access to justice. Kofi Annan,
the Secretary General of the United Nations, recently wrote the
following about the necessity of protecting the rule of law and
access to justice:

The United Nations has learned that the rule of law is

not a luxury and that justice is not a side issue. We
have seen people lose faith in a peace process when
they do not feel safe from crime. We have seen that
without a credible machinery to enforce the law and
resolve disputes, people resorted to violence and illegal
means. And we have seen that elections held when the
rule of law is too fragile seldom lead to lasting
democratic governance. We have learned that the rule
of law delayed is lasting peace denied, and that justice
is a handmaiden of true peace. We must take a
comprehensive approach to Justice and the Rule of
Law. It should encompass the entire criminal justice

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 chain, not only police, but lawyers, prosecutors, judges
and prison officers, as well as many issues beyond the
criminal justice system. But a “one-size-fits-all” does
not work.15

South Africa has its own unique problems when it comes to access
to justice. In the face of high levels of crime, the criminal justice
system faces a serious challenge to ensure that victims have the
satisfaction of knowing that those who harmed them or their loved
ones are brought to justice. Legal representation remains beyond
the financial reach of many South Africans and it is true that more
money ensures better representation. That is not equal access to
justice and the challenge we face is what strategies we should
adopt to rectify the position. The Constitution should not become a
tool of the rich. Equal justice means that the fruits of justice are
there for all to enjoy. The provision of equal access to justice is
therefore a priority in reaching our transformative goal.

Legal education
The next challenge I see to transformation is in the sphere of legal
education. The way we teach law students and the values and
philosophies we instil in them will define the legal landscape of the
future. Most of us here today are familiar with a traditional legal
education that focuses predominantly on private and commercial
law and rewards the rational deduction of inevitable conclusions
from unquestionable principles. That is how we were taught and it
is a vital part of any lawyer’s arsenal. We would be failing in our
duty to both the students and the public if we did not pass on the
tradition of analytical argument and a full knowledge of the legal
principles that govern everyday human interaction and form the
main part of a lawyers work.

However, that education is no longer enough. We can no longer

teach the lawyers of tomorrow that they must blindly accept legal
principles because of the authority. No longer can we responsibly
turn out law graduates who are unable to critically engage with the
values of the Constitution and who are unwilling to implement those
values in all corners of their practices. A truly transformative South
Africa requires a new approach that places the Constitutional dream

15 United Nations Development Program Access to Justice: Practice Note (2004) at 2.

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at the very heart of legal education. It requires that we regard law
as part of the social fabric and teach law students to see it as such.
They should see law for what it is, as an instrument that was used
to oppress in the past, but that has that immense power and
capacity to transform our society.

Much has been done to bring legal education in line with these
ideals. Constitutional and human rights law now form a much
greater part of the curriculum and the vast majority of courses and
text-books on traditional private or commercial areas devote
sections to the impact of the Constitution on that field of law.
However, we must be careful that the influence of the Constitution
does not become simply another set of cast-in-stone legal principles.
The change to legal education is a change in mind-set, not simply a
change in laws.

Legal Culture
But what of the existing legal community that has already received
their legal education and training? In his article ‘Legal Culture and
Transformative Constitutionalism’, Karl Klare highlights what he
terms the inherent conservatism of South African legal culture and
he compares it with what he believes it should be.16 ‘Conservatism’
in this context applies to a jurisprudential approach, not a political
outlook. When he talks about ‘legal culture’, Klare is referring to
‘the professional sensibilities, habits of mind and intellectual
reflexes’ of lawyers or those ingrained ideas about how the law
works and what arguments are and are not convincing. Our
recourse to this culture is often subconscious as it is such a basic
part of how we approach legal problems.

According to Klare, there is a tendency to follow a formalistic or

technical approach to law. He sees this approach to legal
interpretation as ‘highly structured, technicist, literal and rule-
bound’ as opposed to the ‘policy-oriented and consequentialist’17
approach that he favours. A number of other scholars have written
about what they see as the conservatism of South African legal

16 K Klare ‘Legal Culture and Transformative Constitutionalism’ (1998) 14 SAJHR 146.

17 Ibid at 168.

8
culture18 and argue that it is still based on formal rather than
substantive legal reasoning.19 This formal reasoning prevents an
inquiry into the true motivation for certain decisions and presents
the law as neutral and objective when in reality it expresses a
particular politics and enforces a singular conception of society.
Johan Froneman refers to this as a ‘delusional danger’ and states
that it has not been wiped away by the advent of the new
Constitution. The Constitution, like any law can be interpreted
formally and thus allow judges to avoid engagement with substance
and evade the search for justice.

Let me however make two important caveats. First, not all South
African lawyers are guilty of the conservatism and formalism they
seem to be accused of. Indeed, much of the resistance to apartheid
was built on the idea that, to be enforceable, laws must be
substantively just. That spirit still inspires many lawyers and judges
and they continue to play an incredibly invaluable part in taking us
forward in constitutional interpretation. Secondly, there is much to
be said for sticking to the rules when they are clear and good. It is
when adherence to the word is taken too far, when the upholding of
a law obscures or ignores that law exists to try, however difficult, to
ensure justice, that formalism becomes dangerous.

It is this type of conservative or formalist approach to law that is

inconsistent with a transformative constitution. At the heart of a
transformative constitution is a commitment to substantive
reasoning, to examining the underlying principles that inform laws
themselves and judicial reaction to those laws. Purely formalist
reasoning tends to avoid that responsibility.

However, while it is vital that we embrace the idea of substantive

adjudication, there is a distinct limit as to how far we can go.
Judges do not have a free rein to determine what the law is. Laws,
including the Constitution, do not mean ‘whatever we wish them to
mean’.20 This limit on judicial law-making is encapsulated in the

18 See for example H Botha ‘Freedom and Constraint in Constitutional Adjudication’ (2004) 20 SAJHR 249; A van
der Walt ‘Tradition on Trial: A Critical Analysis of the Civil-Law Tradition in South African Property Law’ (1995) 11
SAJHR 169;
19 J Froneman ‘Legal Reasoning and Legal Culture: Our “Vision of Law”’ (2005) 16 Stell LR 1.
20 Mistry v Interim National Medical and Dental Council of South Africa and Others 1998 (7) BCLR 880 (CC) at para 49.

9
idea of the separation of powers. The Constitution itself entrenches
the notion of different roles for the different arms of government: the
legislature makes the law, the judiciary interprets the law and the
executive enforces the law. Were the Courts to completely discard
any adherence to the text they would enter squarely into the domain
of the legislature as creators rather than interpreters of the law.
That is clearly not what the Constitution envisages.

This is not to suggest that the courts have no law-making

responsibility. Upholding the transformative ideal of the
Constitution requires judges to change the law to bring it in line with
the rights and values for which the Constitution stands. The
problem lies in finding the fine line between transformation and
legislation. Overly activist judges can be as dangerous for the
fulfilment of the constitutional dream as unduly passive judges.
Both disturb the finely- balanced ordering of society and endanger
the ideals of transformation.

Responsibility for transformation and Reconciliation

From this it follows that transformation is not the responsibility that
must be borne by the courts alone – it is a task for all three arms of
government to perform in partnership. Widespread transformation of
economic and social conditions is beyond the powers of the courts
alone. Only when our judicial commitment is coupled with
legislative reform and appropriate executive action can the vast
disparities that continue to exist in South Africa be eradicated.

Finally, transformation is not something that occurs only in

courtrooms, parliaments and governmental departments. Social
transformation is indispensable to our society. In South Africa, it is
synonymous with reconciliation. If there is no reconciliation
between the people and groups of South Africa we will simply have
changed the material conditions and the legal culture of a society
that remains fractured and divided by bitterness and hate.

That is what the late Chief Justice Mahomed had in mind when he
wrote that if certain steps are not taken,

‘both the victims and the culprits [of apartheid] who

walk on the “historic bridge” described by the epilogue
[to the interim Constitution] will hobble more than walk

10
 to the future with heavy and dragged steps, delaying
and impeding a rapid and enthusiastic transition to the
new society at the end of the bridge’.21

Reconciliation and forgiveness are beyond the power of the law. We

cannot legislate reconciliation and we cannot order forgiveness. In
his recollections on the TRC Alex Borraine writes that he agrees
with Albert Einstein’s pronouncement that ‘as long as there will be
man, there will be war.’ ‘Nevertheless,’ Borraine continues, ‘I still
believe that goodness and beauty, compassion and new beginnings,
can triumph over the evil which seems to be all-pervasive.’ This
hope stems ‘from the courage and generosity of spirit of those South
Africans who had been hurt the most and who had been regarded
and treated as less than human’ but had ‘expressed their
willingness to forsake revenge and commit themselves to
forgiveness and reconciliation. It is this truth that gives me hope for
the future.’

I should not be understood as saying that all those who were

wounded by apartheid must forgive. Many cannot forgive and we
cannot fault them for that. There is no right way to deal with the
immense violation that was apartheid. But, as a society, we must
keep alive the hope that we can move beyond our past. That
requires both a remembering and a forgetting. We must remember
what it is that brought us here. But at the same time we must forget
the hate and anger that fuelled some of our activities if we are to
avoid returning to the same cycle of violence and oppression.

Creating a climate for reconciliation

There is a final point I wish to make on this score. The call for
reconciliation is not only for the ears of the victims of apartheid, it is
equally important that those who benefited from apartheid take
responsibility for creating a climate in which forgiveness, and
ultimately reconciliation is possible. Mahmood Mamdani has written
about the distinction between a narrow political reconciliation
between victim and perpetrator and a broader and lasting social
reconciliation of the entire nation. He describes the need for that
distinction as follows:

21 Azanian Peoples Organisation (AZAPO) & Others v President of the Republic of South Africa & Others 1996 (4) SA 671
(CC) at para 18.

11
 ‘Where the focus is on perpetrators, victims are
necessarily defined as the minority of political
activists; for the victimhood of the majority to be
recognized, the focus has to shift from perpetrators to
beneficiaries. The difference is this: whereas the focus
on perpetrators fuels the demand for justice as criminal
justice, that on beneficiaries would shift focus to a
notion of justice as social justice. … A focus on power
that links power to privilege links perpetrator to
beneficiary, racialized power to racialized privilege, and
puts at center-stage the relationship between
beneficiary and victim as the majority. To recognize
this difference is, I think, key to thinking through how
to make the reconciliation durable.22

Social reconciliation does not mean that we increase the blame on

the beneficiaries of apartheid. What it does recognize and require is
that beneficiaries take responsibility for ensuring that reconciliation
is possible. Beneficiaries cannot stand on the sidelines as having no
role to play in reconciliation as they do not need to forgive or be
forgiven. All South Africans, beneficiaries, victims and perpetrators
must work together to create a climate of reconciliation. There are
many ways to foster that climate: through public dialogue, art and
music. But the most effective manner to summon the rain of
forgiveness is, as Mamdani notes, through social justice which must
include a levelling of socio-economic conditions. Reconciliation
therefore supplements, but also requires an improvement of socio-
economic conditions. Creating a climate for forgiveness as one of
our national projects means that no one takes forgiveness for
granted. It can never be a one-sided exercise. That is why I believe
that national reconciliation cannot be divorced from the
reconstruction of the socio-economic conditions of the country. The
responsibility for that, however, goes beyond the government of the
day. It is, as I have indicated a national project - for all of us.

Conclusion
These then are the challenges that I see facing transformative
constitutionalism: legal education, legal culture, maintaining the

22 Mahmood Mamdani When Does Reconciliation Turn into a Denial of Justice? (1998) at 14.

12
separation of powers while ensuring that all arms of government
work together and reconciliation. Can we overcome these
dilemmas? I do not know. But I take solace in the idea that perhaps
rather than obstacles, these factors can be viewed as enabling
conditions for transformation. For as long as they exist there will be
a drive to overcome them, there will be a tension that keeps alive
the idea that things can be different. When all the challenges are
gone, that is when the real danger arises. That is when we slip into
a useless self-congratulatory complacency, a misplaced euphoria
that where we are now is the only place to be. That is when we stop
dreaming, imagining and planning that things could be different,
could be better. That, for me, is the true challenge of
transformation.

I thank you.

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