Court authorizes Mandela to sign new constitution

Court authorizes Mandela to sign new constitution

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuter): South Africa's highest court yesterday authorized President Nelson Mandela to sign into law a post-apartheid constitution that enforces racial and social equality.

Mandela will sign the document next Tuesday, which is International Human Rights Day, at a ceremony in Sharpeville where white police massacred 69 black pro-democracy demonstrators in 1960, Constitutional Affairs Minister Mohammed Valli Moosa told Reuters.

"We are more than elated, both as the ANC (African National Congress) and as government, that this chapter in our history is now behind us," he said of the two-year constitution-writing process formally ended by the court's ratification of the text.

This "is a document that will no doubt serve as a beacon in constitutionalism not only here, but internationally."

The 11-member Constitutional Court overruled objections by two opposition parties to a revised draft constitution adopted by the National Assembly and Senate sitting together as a Constitutional Assembly in October.

"We certify that all the provisions of the amended constitutional text...comply with the constitutional principles contained in...the (interim) constitution of the Republic of South Africa," Court President Arthur Chaskalson said.

Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party, remains opposed to the constitution, saying it fails to give provinces the extensive federal powers he had demanded since democracy talks began in 1990.

Inkatha and the liberal Democratic Party, citing mainly technical flaws in the text, were the only groups who opposed ratification of the final document.

Roelf Meyer, chief negotiator for the white-led National Party that relinquished power to Mandela in 1994, said he was delighted by the ruling.

"It is a document that all South Africans can be proud of," he said. "Although it might not be perfect in every respect, I guess no constitution anywhere in the world is perfect."

The constitution, which Mandela has called the birth certificate of a democratic South Africa, will entrench a bill of rights enforcing race, gender and social equality in a country that has been characterized by white privilege.

Amongst its more controversial provisions are a prohibition on capital punishment, guaranteed trade union rights and a property clause that could empower the government to redress the skewed pattern of land ownership created by apartheid.

Unless it is amended by at least two-thirds of the nation's legislators, the constitution would make it impossible for any future government to suspend human rights or to favor one section of the population as successive white governments did.