Download this publication - PULP

206 Chapter 12
The ability to give our lives meaning and to determine the course
by which we give our lives meaning, leads to the recognition that we
are able to govern our selves. At a minimum, this recognition of our
ability to govern our selves supports the more formal political
recognition that just as each one of us is capable of and entitled to
govern our individual self, so too each one of us is equally capable of
legislating on behalf of the broader community of which we are a
part. This mutual recognition of one another as rational beings
capable of ordering the ends both of our own lives and of the larger
community underwrites the final insight: That we not only live in a
realm of ends, but that if such a realm is to have real meaning, we
must be willing to order our community in a manner that enables each
individual to realise their status as an end. It is simply not enough to
(a) not turn away from suffering, (b) end discrimination and (c) grant
all citizens the franchise. Once we recognise others as ends we must
be committed — at some level — to the provision of those material
means necessary to live as ends. To refuse them such means might
render meaningless the more formal guarantees found in the Final
Constitution. As the Court itself notes in Grootboom:
The Constitution will be worth infinitely less than its paper if the
reasonableness of state action concerned with housing is determined
without regard to the fundamental constitutional value of human
dignity. Section 26, read in the context of the Bill of Rights as a whole,
must mean that the respondents have a right to reasonable action by the
state in all circumstances and with particular regard to human dignity. In
short, I emphasise that human beings are required to be treated as
human beings. 35
4 Uses of dignity
The word ‘dignity’ is sprinkled about the text of the Final
Constitution. It is a founding value: FC section 1(a). It acts as a
cornerstone of both democracy and the Bill of Rights: FC section 7(1).
It informs both our interpretation of the ambit of the specific
substantive provisions of the Bill of Rights — FC section 39(1) — and
our analysis of the justification of any limitation of a right or freedom
— FC section 36. It governs the behaviour of our courts, other tribunals
and state institutions supporting constitutional democracy: FC
sections 165, 181, 196. It is, perhaps most importantly, the second
substantive right identified in the Bill of Rights: FC section 10. That
dignity operates as a first order rule, a second order rule, a
correlative right, a value and a grundnorm — and sometimes all in a
single case — is confirmed by Justice O’ Regan’s oft quoted dictum in
Dawood:
35 Grootboom (n 28 above) para 83 (my emphasis).