Shared Interest News

Fifty years ago, on June 26, 1955, the Freedom Charter adopted by a people’s assembly in South Africa proclaimed that “All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security.” The ringing declarations in the Charter did not stop with the vote, but set housing and other social and economic assets such as “work and security” as indispensable goals to be guaranteed to all. At that time these fundamental rights were denied to people of color by the apartheid system in South Africa and by segregation in the United States. These denials were enshrined in discriminatory laws as well as in pervasive structural inequalities and racial abuse.

Today, in principle, the legal barriers to achievement of these rights are gone. In South Africa, moreover, the government’s obligation to realize social and economic as well as political rights is mandated by the Constitution. While the United States government still opposes the growing international consensus that states have a legal obligation to ensure basic living conditions for all, South Africa’s constitutional court has ruled that such rights are not just ideals but binding obligations (see the illustrative excerpts below on the right to housing). continued…