Unrealized Potential: South Africa’s Bill of Inaccessible Rights: What three Cape Town human rights activist have to say about the adequacy of three clauses in South Africa’s Bill of Rights

The South African Constitution is often referred to as the most progressive constitution in the world by both locals and international academics. Its establishment would come after decades of racial abuse and discrimination which called for political and social rights for a population that had been neglected for years. Although, this sentiment quickly comes into question as soon as an individual travels more than ten kilometers outside of the Cape Town city center. This is where informal settlements and their lack of basic necessities such as clean water, proper housing structures, and consistent education become visible. The South African Bill of Rights claims to provide a level of adequacy in each of these areas, but a discrepancy between what is promised and what is realized clearly exist. The extent of this gap, what has caused it, and its potential implications is what the rest of this paper has explored through contributions made by local South African human rights activists. By interviewing three people who work at human rights organizations, sections of the Bill of Rights as it is written within the South African Constitution will be compared to the realistic accessibility of these rights, specifically in relation to vulnerable populations which lack access to these rights the most. Their words shaped a rewritten version of three clauses within the South African Bill of Rights to adequately represent what protections South African citizens can realistically expect from their Constitution. The areas of focus within this research include Section 26: Housing; Section 27: Health care, food, water, and social security; and Section 29: Education. Activists were quick to point out the inadequacies in the South African Bill of Rights which exists to many as a paper of poetic promises and nothing more. This research was based on these inadequacies, but interviews would further highlight the consistency in inconsistencies that protected the insufficiencies of the Bill of Rights as a whole. Themes between the impact of “progressive realisation”, citizen awareness, and the inexplicable relationship between different rights are explored in the research portion of this paper. This study has used the well-recognized fact of human rights shortcomings within South Africa to creatively express the realities of human rights protections and the threads that have and continue to replicate a present which cannot escape its past.