Department of Public Law

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Browsing Department of Public Law by Author "Basson, Gideon Burnett"

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    Poverty as a ground of unfair discrimination in post-apartheid South Africa
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-03) Basson, Gideon Burnett; Liebenberg, Sandra; Botha, Henk; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Law. Dept. of Public Law.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Since the advent of constitutional democracy, the project of transformative constitutionalism has had limited success in addressing structural poverty and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. The stubborn nature of poverty and inequality is a result of four-hundred-odd years of politically calculated spatial ghettoisation, infrastructural neglect, land dispossessions, privileged citizenship, elite capture, perpetual wealth hoarding and unequal access to socio-economic goods. As a result, impoverished people continue to experience pervasive forms of discrimination such as violence, abhorrent prejudices, political marginalisation and structural barriers to accessing basic needs. Despite this reality, poverty is not recognised as an entrenched prohibited ground of discrimination. This study develops a comprehensive interpretative framework to conceptualise poverty as a ground of discrimination under the Constitution and the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000. It does so specifically by developing a transformative conception of substantive equality that should undergird impoverished people’s right to equality and non-discrimination. It draws from the work of the global justice critical social theorist Nancy Fraser as well as South African critical legal scholars to postulate an appropriate framework for conceptualising poverty as a ground of unfair discrimination under current capitalist conditions within the South African constitutional regime. The study employs a critical methodology to examine the implications of a reimagined transformative conception of substantive equality for the adjudication and litigation of poverty as a ground of unfair discrimination.