SOUTH AFRICA’S JOURNEY TOWARDS PEACE
The National Council of Provinces (NCOP) Building which also houses the Library of Parliament. Completed in 1885 for the Cape Colony Parliament, it housed South Africa’s Senate from 1910 to 1980, the House of Representatives in the tricameral racially-based system from 1983 to 1994 and the democratic Senate from 1994 until 1997 when the NCOP replaced it..
constitute the premises of our new constitution and conclusively repudiate the white supremacist vision of racially differentiated groups with their own segregated government structures and territories. At the same time, our constitution would recognize, accommodate and even celebrate South Africa’s diversity and the multiculturalism of our society. The main difficulty stemmed from the movement’s basic principles. A constitution is the embodiment of the will of the nation; if it is to enjoy legitimacy, it must come from the people. In other words, the authors of a constitution must have a mandate from the people.
The Freedom Charter, drafted on the basis of the popular claims
and aspirations brought to Kliptown, Soweto, from across South Africa, embodied the genuine will of the people.
But the Congress of the People back in the 1950s was also the last time the movement had been assembled and able to grant a mandate to its leaders. To produce a constitution now would therefore be highly problematic; it would presuppose that a group of experts could draft the document. Therefore, instead of authoring a draft constitution, we resolved to draw up a set of guidelines to inform the ANC’s approach to a post-apartheid constitutional order. We completed our draft constitutional guidelines documents in the course of 1987.
The constitutional guidelines set down principles for a future constitution based on the vision of an independent, unitary, democratic, non- racial South Africa. There would be a single Legislature (unlike the racial segregated tricameral Parliament of the apartheid government) and promote a single national identity, inclusive of all South Africans, but respectful of culture and linguistic diversity.
The Constitutional Committee continued to meet regularly in Lusaka, except for one meeting in 1988, soon after Albie Sachs survived a car bomb attack in Maputo by the South African security forces, in which he lost his right arm and the sight of one eye. Because he was too weak to travel,
the entire committee relocated to London to enable Albie to attend. Sometime after he was released from hospital after the horrific attack, Albie flew to Dublin to work with me on the draft ANC Bill of Rights. As always it was raining in Dublin, and I remember having my repeated smoke breaks outside in the rain because the smoke hurt Albie’s damaged eye. Seated at my kitchen table, with Albie struggling to learn to write with his left hand, we resumed work together on drafting our country’s Bill of Rights. We were strongly aware of being part of a process of writing history; this was going to be the text of our document that would become a lodestar for the ANC during the negotiation process.
The Parliamentarian | 2013: Issue One - South Africa | 55
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