We, the people : insights of an activist judge / Albie Sachs.
2016
KTL110.S23 A32 2016 (Mapit)
Available at Stacks
Items
Details
Author
Uniform Title
Essays. Selections
Title
We, the people : insights of an activist judge / Albie Sachs.
Imprint
Johannesburg : Wits University Press, 2016.
Copyright
©2016.
Description
xxii, 349 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 23 cm
Formatted Contents Note
Introduction
In the beginning
Hope and caution in exile
We have to mistrust ourselves
Inventing a constitution
With clean hands and without secrets
Reconciling the past and the future
Living constitutional law and Ubuntu
More than crumbs from the table: enforcing social and economic rights
Struggle continues
Are the beautiful people born?
Cases cited
Sources
Index.
In the beginning
Hope and caution in exile
We have to mistrust ourselves
Inventing a constitution
With clean hands and without secrets
Reconciling the past and the future
Living constitutional law and Ubuntu
More than crumbs from the table: enforcing social and economic rights
Struggle continues
Are the beautiful people born?
Cases cited
Sources
Index.
Summary
The stirring collection of essays, talks and extracts by activists and former judge Albie Sachs marks more than 25 years of thinking about constitution making and non-racialism. Following the Constitutional Court's landmark Nkandla ruling in March 2016, it serves as a powerful reminder of the tenets of the Constitution, the rule of law and the continuous struggle to uphold democratic rights and freedoms. We, the People offers an intimate, insider's view of South Africa's Constitution by a writer who has been deeply entrenched in its historical journey from the depths of apartheid right up to the politically contested present. As a second-year law student at the University of Cape Town, Sachs took part in the Defiance Campaign and went on to attend the Congress of the People in Kliptown, where the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955. Three decades later, shortly after the bomb attack in Maputo that cost him his arm and the sight in one eye, he was called on by the Constitutional Committee of the African National Congress to co-draft (with Kader Asmal) the first outline of a Bill of Rights for a new democratic South Africa. In 1994, he was appointed by Nelson Mandela to the Constitutional Court, where he served as a judge until 2009. We, the People consists of some of Sachs' most memorable public talks and writings, in which he takes us back to the broad-based popular foundations of the Constitution in the Freedom Charter. He picks up on Oliver Tambo's original vision of a non-racial future for South Africa, rather than one based on institutionalised power-sharing between the races. He explores the tension between perfectibility and corruptibility, hope and mistrust, at the centre of all the constitutions. Sachs deals with the enforcement of social and economic rights and the building of the Constitutional Court in the heart of the Old Fort Prison as a mechanism for reconciling the past and the future. Subjective experience and objective analysis interact powerfully in a personalised narrative that reasserts the value of constitutionality not just for South Africans, but for people striving to advance human dignity, equality and freedom across the planet today -- Amazon.-- Source other than Library of Congress.
Note
Includes index.
Location
STA
Call Number
KTL110.S23 A32 2016
Language
English
ISBN
1868149986 (paperback)
9781868149988 (paperback)
97811868149995 (Web PDF)
9781776140008 (EPUB - North and South America and China)
9781776140015 (EPUB - Rest of world)
9781868149988 (paperback)
97811868149995 (Web PDF)
9781776140008 (EPUB - North and South America and China)
9781776140015 (EPUB - Rest of world)
Record Appears in