Red Alert: The fundamental importance on the right to life and dignity: Communists celebrating Human Rights month
The SACP this week joined millions of our people in celebrating Human Rights Day. For centuries millions of our people stood up and fought for the restoration of human dignity that colonialism and apartheid had denied them. Many of them gave up their lives in this struggle. Many, like the victims of the Sharpville massacre, were brutally attacked by the regime when all they did was to engage in peaceful protest.
The SACP warmly welcomes the President' message to the nation on this important day. In partiular we welcome the emphasis the President put on socio-economic rights, which was the major focus of his speech, outlining the many transformative interventions government has made on this score. The President's speech is a timely reminder that after all, for South Africans to enjoy full human rights we need to escalate the assault on the class, racial and gender inequalities underpinning our society.
In a hardly quoted judgement of the Constitutional Court in 1995, often deliberately and conveniently ignored by the liberals, concluded that
"The rights of life and dignity are the most important of all human rights, and the source of all other rights. By committing ourselves to a society founded on the recognition of human rights we are required to value these two rights above all others".
Whilst all the rights enshrined in the constitution are important, nevertheless our Constitutional Court has set the priorities right. The right to life and dignity are words with no meaning to our people when their daily experiences are that of grinding poverty, unemployment and a growing gap between the ordinary people and the rich. This is a violaton of the rights to life and dignity.