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The Opportunities Faced by the GNU in Making the Constitution a Lived Reality for All South Africans

Prof Dirk Kotze shared his thoughts on the opportunities faced by the GNU in making the Constitution a lived reality for all South Africans in a speech at the Foundation’s Coalition Government Conference.

The post THE OPPORTUNITIES FACED BY THE GNU IN MAKING THE CONSTITUTION A LIVED REALITY FOR ALL SOUTH AFRICANS – PROF DIRK KOTZE appeared first on FW de Klerk Foundation.

Address by Prof Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Sciences at UNISA, at the FW de Klerk Foundation’s Coalition Government Conference, 12 July 2024:

Good afternoon and thank you very much for the invitation to be here and to listen to all the other speakers. My approach will be to take the Government of National Unity (GNU) for granted. It’s there, it has been negotiated, it’s established, and it has already started to work.

Tomorrow, they will meet at the Presidential Guest House for the cabinet lekgotla. The purpose of my discussion will be to explore the GNU in relation to the Constitution. I do not think that we anticipated that we would reach this point during the lifetime of this Constitution. This Constitution was not designed for a coalition type of government. It was more for a one-party government, a majority-party government.

I think this is one of the reasons why the negotiations after the elections took so long and were so difficult. Now we are at the point of dealing with policymaking in the GNU. When policymaking happens within one government, one party as government, it obviously aligns with the party’s systems and overlaps with those of government.

I am going to look at three focus areas: first, the relationship between the government and the Constitution; second, the main constitutional values; and lastly, what is the Government of National Unity in relation to the Constitution.

I am going to differ on some aspects with some of the previous speakers, but I guess that’s the nature of such a discussion’s debates, where we have different views and insights. I am not going to give you a lecture on constitutions, but my understanding, as a political scientist, is that a characteristic of a national Constitution is that it determines the relationship between the government and the population, the voters, or the citizens, including those living in the country. It provides that basic framework of the..continue reading this article HERE.

 

Siviwe Gwarube: {2024 – present} Siviwe Gwarube (born 14 July 1989) is a South African politician who
is currently serving as Minister of Basic Education since July 2024. A member of the Democratic Alliance (DA), she was the Chief Whip of the Official Opposition between August 2022 and June 2024. She joined the National Assembly of South Africa in the May 2019 general election.

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