Quote of the week
Early in 2016, a racist outburst by a white woman in KwaZulu-Natal, Penny Sparrow, ridiculing Black beachgoers as ‘monkeys’, and announcing that thenceforth she would ‘address the [B]lacks of South Africa as monkeys’, published in her online profile, was quickly disseminated countrywide. It convulsed South Africa in shame and acrid anger. The [Constitutional] Court was not unaffected. Previous members of the Constitutional Court took comfort in reflecting, with evident satisfaction, on the absence of racially loaded and racially defined splits. Dramatically, these now fractured the Court.
"Rainbows and Realities: Justice Johan Froneman in the Explosive Terrain of Linguistic and Cultural Rights" - Constitutional Court Review
On xenophobia and the law
Excluding refugees from the right to work as private security providers simply because they are refugees will inevitably foster a climate of xenophobia which will be harmful to refugees and inconsistent with the overall vision of our Constitution. As a group that is by definition vulnerable, the impact of discrimination of this sort can be damaging in a significant way. In reaching this conclusion it is important to bear in mind that it is not only the social stigma which may result from such discrimination, but also the material impact that it may have on refugees.
