Hey there lawful readers! We would like to introduce you to the most important source of law, the Constitution of South Africa, the Bill of rights contained therein and constitutionalism.
Chapter 1, Section 2 of the Constitution states that the Constitution is the “supreme law “of the Republic of South Africa. The Constitution was passed in 1996 by parliament and contains written and unwritten rules that control our political system and its functioning.
Chapter 2 of the Constitution contains the Bill of Rights. The Bill protects the rights of all people in South Africa, not only its citizens. The state must respect, promote and fulfil the rights in the Bill. These rights can be limited in certain circumstances. For example, freedom is a right we all have, but the state has the right to send people to prison if they have been convicted of a crime by a court. We will go into detail in future posts about the bill of rights because we noticed many people do not know what their rights are.
To get a better understanding of the constitution and its importance we’ve created a summarised breakdown of our government. In order to prevent the abuse of power and to secure liberty and democracy our government is divided into three different branches which coexist, are interrelated yet still independent. They include:-
The legislature (the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces) – they draft, amend and repeal laws.
The executive (the Presidents and Ministers) – they implement and enforce laws that have been made by parliament.
The judiciary (the Courts) – they interpret and apply laws in order to resolve disputes.
Constitutionalism is another fundamental aspect of law which refers to government that’s in accordance with the constitution, since the government gets its powers from the constitution it is BOUND by it and therefore limited in terms of the constitution. Parliament cannot pass a law which goes against the Constitution and if that does happen then the law will be considered null/void. No person and that includes the President, can go against the Constitution. The courts and the government must also make sure what they do is constitutional and does not go against the supreme law of our land.
On our posts that will follow we will dive in depth into the bill of rights, meaning of each right, its limitations and application.
Lawfully living 