On 21 March, South Africa observed Human Rights Day, a day that commemorates the events of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre and the brutal legacy of human rights violation during apartheid. The month of March is also serves as a reminder of the sacrifices that went into the struggle for democracy in South Africa. 

At the dawn of democracy in 1994, South Africa enshrined into its constitution one of the most extensive Bill of Rights of any country in the world. In part as a demonstration of the new democratic government’s dedication to embracing “shared values of human rights and dignity for everyone”. The preamble to South Africa’s constitution, often cited in Constitutional Court judgments, recognised “injustices of our past” and adopted the new constitution as the supreme law of the land intended to “heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights”. 

On this episode of A Look at the Issues we are joined by someone with intimate knowledge of the struggle that went into the constitution-making process in South Africa. Justice Kate O’Regan was appointed by then President Nelson Mandela to serve on the first bench of the Constitutional Court in 1994, the youngest of the justices and one of only two women at the time. Recorded a day after International Women’s Day, Kate reflects on a time in South African history that was filled with hope and anxiety and her role in the design of a new constitutional democracy.

Professor Kate O’Regan is the director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford. Kate was a former justice of the South African Constitutional Court (1994 – 2009) and ad hoc judge of the Supreme Court of Namibia (2010 – 2016). She also served as inaugural chairperson of the United Nations Internal Justice Council.