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82 Chapter 6
that are integral to democracy. Once this task is complete, it will be
possible to decide whether the case law necessitates an amendment
to the principle of democracy discernible in the constitutional text.
2 The principle of democracy: The text
The principle of democracy derived from FC section 1(d) is supported
by the preamble. The first part of the preamble characterises
democracy not as a value-neutral set of procedures for achieving
other valued ends, but as a value system in itself. This is in keeping
with FC section 1(d)’s commitment to the institutions of representative
government as a means to ensure a particular kind of
relationship between government and the governed. The second part
of the preamble also affirms the core idea that democracy is a system
of government ‘based on the will of the people’ and in which ‘every
citizen is equally protected by law’. The principle of political equality
to which this part of the preamble refers is reflected in FC section
1(d)’s commitment to universal adult suffrage on a national common
voters’ roll. The two statements of that principle are not incompatible
with each other, and together can be incorporated into the
democratic principle’s understanding of political equality as a
necessary condition for the sort of relationship between government
and the governed that it seeks to establish. Finally, the preamble’s
concern with the connection between the consolidation of democracy
in South Africa and South Africa’s relationship to other sovereign
states is not part of the democratic principle itself, but rather a
statement about the consequences that are expected to follow from
the observance of that principle. It is therefore not necessary to try
to incorporate the third part of the preamble into our understanding
of the principle of democracy in South African constitutional law.
The main feature of the reading of the relationship between rights
and democracy in the chapter on which this essay is based was that
these two concepts should not be seen to be in conflict with each
other, but rather as being in a kind of constructive tension, the
resolution of which should take place on a case-by-case basis in
accordance with the democratic values of ‘human dignity, equality
and freedom’. 4 These values are repeated in FC sections 7(1), 36(1)
and 39(1). They also appear in a slightly extended form in FC section
1(a). The repetition of the same set of values in these provisions is
deliberate, the intention being to make it clear that the rights in the
Bill of Rights do not detract from democracy, but are rather
constitutive of it. This Dworkinian approach to the relationship
between rights and democracy is plainly incompatible with any
4 See Roux (n 3 above) § 10.3(c).