Toronto, 20 May 2016 — The story of how the South African constitution was created, was the subject of the this year’s Annual Pluralism Lecture. And it was all the more remarkable for the formidable storyteller who recounted it.
Justice Albie Sachs — heroic activist, freedom fighter and a former judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa — delivered the talk, a yearly fixture of the Global Centre for Pluralism. Mawlana Hazar Imam introduced him as “a chief architect of South Africa’s new post-apartheid constitution, one of the most admired constitutions in the world.”
“In the pursuit of an effective pluralism,” said Hazar Imam, “we can learn a great deal from studying the South African constitution.”
In the pursuit of an effective pluralism, we can learn a great deal from studying the South African constitution. –His Highness the Aga Khan
In their struggle to define their post-apartheid nation, explained Justice Sachs, South Africans faced a fundamental choice between constructing a power sharing structure along the dividing lines of race, or striving for equality on the basis of a shared humanity.
Oliver Tambo, then president of the African National Congress was firmly against “power sharing between racial and ethnic groups,” recalled Justice Sachs. Tambo argued persuasively for “a common society of citizens, where rights are protected through a bill of rights — not because you are white or black or a member of a majority or minority, but because you are a human being.”
Read more at the source: The Ismaili
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