MAY 2018 CSL2601 EXAMINATION
QUESTION 2
Carefully read the scenario below and then answer the questions that follow. Substantiate
your answers with specific references to relevant provisions of the South African Constitution
or other legislation and case law.
In January 2015 the South African state ratified the 1966 International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Accordingly, this crystallised the protection of
fundamental socio-economic rights – such as the right to education – as a binding obligation,
although the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa also includes a long list of justiciable
socio-economic rights. Notwithstanding this obligation, South African university students from
across the country have been protesting since 2016, demanding free university education for
those who cannot afford tuition fees. The students argue that radical transformation in the
higher education sector should be prioritised if South Africa is to achieve the objectives of
ensuring:
a. a post-school system that can assist in building a fair, equitable, non-racial, non-
sexist and democratic South Africa;
b. expanded access and improved quality; and
c. a post-school system that is responsive to the needs of individual citizens and
employers in both public and private sectors, and broader societal and
developmental objectives.
The students further assert that reform will necessarily entail that tuition fees are made
affordable since prohibitively high fees exclude black students, in particular, from tertiary
education. The overriding argument of the students was contained in a press release:
PRESS RELEASE
South Africa is a social state that places a specific focus on the importance of community
and the fact that all people in society are demeaned when some people do not have their
social and economic needs met.
Constitutional law is politics by a different means, but it remains a form of politics, and
the personal is political! The current academic authority on South Africa’s legal order, the
book South African Constitutional Law in Context by Pierre de Vos and others, indicates
on page 51 that a “state is ‘social’ when it promotes the principle of communally
QUESTION 2
Carefully read the scenario below and then answer the questions that follow. Substantiate
your answers with specific references to relevant provisions of the South African Constitution
or other legislation and case law.
In January 2015 the South African state ratified the 1966 International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Accordingly, this crystallised the protection of
fundamental socio-economic rights – such as the right to education – as a binding obligation,
although the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa also includes a long list of justiciable
socio-economic rights. Notwithstanding this obligation, South African university students from
across the country have been protesting since 2016, demanding free university education for
those who cannot afford tuition fees. The students argue that radical transformation in the
higher education sector should be prioritised if South Africa is to achieve the objectives of
ensuring:
a. a post-school system that can assist in building a fair, equitable, non-racial, non-
sexist and democratic South Africa;
b. expanded access and improved quality; and
c. a post-school system that is responsive to the needs of individual citizens and
employers in both public and private sectors, and broader societal and
developmental objectives.
The students further assert that reform will necessarily entail that tuition fees are made
affordable since prohibitively high fees exclude black students, in particular, from tertiary
education. The overriding argument of the students was contained in a press release:
PRESS RELEASE
South Africa is a social state that places a specific focus on the importance of community
and the fact that all people in society are demeaned when some people do not have their
social and economic needs met.
Constitutional law is politics by a different means, but it remains a form of politics, and
the personal is political! The current academic authority on South Africa’s legal order, the
book South African Constitutional Law in Context by Pierre de Vos and others, indicates
on page 51 that a “state is ‘social’ when it promotes the principle of communally
