An account of the inaugural seminar

The University of Cape Town has a powerful history of activism in the struggle against apartheid. This legacy of political activity has finally been taken up by five students in the Law Faculty of the University of Cape Town. They put together the Students' Seminar for Law and Social Justice, a weekend away for 130 students (from both UCT and the University of the Western Cape) and 25 presenters, dealing with issues of social transformation in South Africa. We arrived at a beautiful valley outside Hermanus on the 7th of September and left on the 9th, having dealt with big issues regarding the role of students, the work of the legal profession using the Constitution and the importance of public social activity in effecting this change. Apartheid may indeed have been overthrown by an extraordinary revolution; and important work may since then have been carried out by passionate people seeking to eradicate the oppressive legacy of this history, but the structural inequality that characterised this system in many respects sadly (although not surprisingly) remains. South Africans may be privileged to live under arguably the most progressive Constitution in the world, but the ideals of dignity, equality and freedom embodied in this document are far from realised for the majority of people living in this country.

The SSLSJ brought together people concerned with the protection of human rights in South Africa. Among them were such luminaries as former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson, Justice Johann Kriegler, Advocate Geoff Budlender, Zackie Achmat and others. A round table debate around the fire on Saturday night, chaired by Judge Dennis Davis, saw Professor Drucilla Cornell, (one of only five UCT staff who chose to participate in the event) proposing a radically different approach to the interpretation and application of the Constitution than that taken by the great technicians of our legal system, and debating it with them; I felt privileged to be a party to this discussion, to be a part of the entire weekend, an essential step in the process of transformation of our law and our society.

The presenters and leaders spoke during the course of the weekend on important issues confronting the legal system and South Africa as a whole in our transitional constitutional democracy. In the exciting endeavour of building personal relationships with like-minded individuals we all, luminaries and other interesting and influential speakers included, sat together at meals prepared by volunteers and talked. We debated the distinctions between political and legal social activism and the relationship, tension and interplay between a political process on the one hand and a legal process on the other. We departed on Sunday evening after three full days of intense learning and discussion, inspired with an urgent need for action and involvement in both.

The law, particularly, was discussed in the seminars with reference to its past as a tool of oppression and of resistance, and its future as a social tool, used to protect the basic human rights of the powerless and deprived in South Africa.

It was shown how competition law is helping to bring down the price of essential medicines, how the social power of the law is severely limited by the lack of access to the legal system for the majority of people who need its protection, how the Treatment Action Campaign cases, as Advocate Budlender told us, would never have seen the results they have without the support of the social movement of people that surrounded them. The TAC and its policy of public protest, engage publically in the issues around the cases and create public accountability.

The question of the problem of remedies for infringements of the positive Constitutional duty on government to progressively realise socio-economic rights such as housing and healthcare was one that echoed the questions of the role of the legal system and how far the law can go into the realm of social policy. Colin Gonsalvez, an inspirational activist lawyer from India, fighting to curb the food shortages suffered by hundreds of millions of starving Indian people, encouraged South Africans to take on a radical approach, infringing on the principle of the separation of powers of the three organs of the state if necessary. He insisted that the ideals of dignity, freedom and equality are more important than the means of achieving their realisation. He started debates about the role of the judiciary and the nature of the law embodied in the Constitution.

Director Janet Love told us that the Legal Resources Centre would not have achieved its great successes and precedent-setting victories without the slog-work of lowly candidate attorneys paginating and photocopying and dedicating themselves later on in their careers to advocacy for the centre. The Constitution, we were reminded, was the product, not only of the negotiated settlement at CODESA, but of years of activism and struggle against the apartheid system.

For those of us students from the law faculty, inspired to take on this need for social action on our return to Cape Town and hopefully also on our graduation with our 'scientific' degrees, various public interest law firms from ProBono.Org to the Women's Legal Centre presented their work. It was a welcome change from the incessant recruitment by large law firms which the University facilitates. Whether we work in one of these community institutions, as activists in civil society, in government or in the mainstream of the legal profession, the sense of commitment to making the Constitution real that permeated the weekend will stay with us. In the meanwhile, as students, we need to create awareness amongst our fellow students and teachers – by effecting a more socially sensitive curriculum and also by fostering a general awareness of the responsibility we hold as the privileged, educated youth. We need to mobilise in student and community structures working for a more just and equal South Africa. This weekend was not only for law students either (and next year we hope to create an even more inclusive dialogue with students from other faculties). There are social implications to any academic endeavour, the knowledge we gain at university puts us all in a position to effect the kind of change we need in South Africa. For some of us this will mean volunteering or tutoring in service-oriented organisations like Shawco, but for others, after the SSLSJ, it will be about finding a political voice to speak for a non-racial, non-sexist, more economically just society.

For it is in all of our interests, in the interest of our shared humanity, in accordance with the ideal of ubuntu, that the terrible poverty and attendant suffering and deprivation plaguing our nation is eradicated. We are all part of this nation, we all contribute in our own way to its future and especially as young, energetic, educated people, we have the power to contribute something positive, something real, and we should not rest until we have.