Human Rights Day: Who is accountable?
Today, Friday 21 March, is Human Rights Day, honouring those killed at Sharpeville on this date in 1960. It is a reminder that our human rights were hard-earned, with the state obliged to take ongoing steps to respect, protect, promote and fulfil them.
Yet, in 2025, the reality is that many rights exist on paper only, and today’s so-called freedoms are shackled by institutional collapse.
It is hardly surprising then that many of us, especially the poor and vulnerable, ask why we celebrate “rights” if we sit in the dark, hoping the taps will yield water, fighting to give our children a quality education so they can fulfil their potential and praying our families will make it safely home without being a victim of violent crime.
What exactly are we celebrating?
The Constitution entrenches various rights for everyone, which include socio-economic rights such as housing, healthcare services and water.
The government is required to realise most socio-economic rights progressively. This may sound good in a law lecture, but after years of collapse, corruption and excuses, the truth is inescapable: it is a euphemism for “not anytime soon”.
We see this in neglected infrastructure all over the country.
In Johannesburg, City Power cannot keep the lights on and in Tshwane, potholes are becoming sinkholes.
In Nelson Mandela Bay, pre-school children face streams of raw sewage outside their creche. Rural schools still have pit latrines, and the bucket system persists in seven out of nine provinces.
This reality occurs even though the Constitution gives everyone the right to an environment that is not harmful to our health or well-being, and requires the state to make accessible, equitable quality education available to all learners — immediately.
The G20 spotlight
In November, Johannesburg will host the 2025 G20 Leaders’ Summit. It is the first time the summit is being held in Africa and President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised to use the event to showcase South Africa’s leadership.
But it is hard to impress world leaders when your own city is falling apart — which the president himself highlighted when he said the state of the city was “not very pleasing”.
Johannesburg is not the exception. To see what human rights failure looks like, most of us need only look out of the window.
The 2025 budget allocated R1.03 trillion for infrastructure over three years. But, with service delivery failures, record-high crime and widespread unemployment, how much of this will reach the people who need it?
Debt-service costs now exceed spending on health, policing and basic education. What does this mean for a person seeking medical care, housing, schooling or safety and security?
Accountability, a foundational constitutional value and principle of governance, means far more than rhetoric, and Ramaphosa’s criticism must translate into action.
Role of the private sector
Human Rights Day should not only focus on government failure because many rights — including the rights to dignity, equality and the provision of a clean and healthy environment — extend to other actors, including those in the private sector.
Our Bill of Rights binds companies and various private actors from polluting, exploiting, discriminating against or dodging their responsibilities to workers and communities.
In South Africa many businesses have become frontline service providers. Think of security firms, water suppliers, borehole and generator providers, and those offering alternate sources of energy such as solar power.
As public providers, they too must advance the human rights’ agenda. Media, tech platforms and companies that shape public discourse are similarly bound and have a duty to respect and promote human rights.
In Nelson Mandela Bay, several firms have rolled up their sleeves and pitched in to fill the metro’s myriad of potholes, fix decaying schools and solve key water leaks. The Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber has an “adopt a sub-station” initiative so that key sub-stations are guarded to ward off power cuts.
While we salute those who help, many firms do not do enough.
Think about it: if your business thrives on state collapse, do you not have an obligation to give back? If you make a profit as a result of a broken system, should you take the money and run? Is this ethical citizenship?
Clearly, with dysfunctional municipalities all over the country, the state has the primary duty to provide services and to support municipalities.
In the Faculty of Law at Nelson Mandela University we have master’s and doctoral candidates doing work on access to water, electricity and healthcare services. These are core socio-economic rights, and research in these areas is aimed at advancing social justice and society’s needs.
NGOs hold the state to account
Experience shows that when the government fails, the courts become the battleground for human rights enforcement.
All too often it is NGOs that lead, and play a significant role in holding the state to account.
The Constitution permits NGOs, and anyone acting in the public interest, to approach the courts alleging a human rights violation and ask for appropriate constitutional remedies.
Across the country, NGOs such as the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa, Corruption Watch, Section 27 and many others are doing wonderful work, pro bono, to fill the gap created by a dysfunctional state administration.
Many of the big cases on the rights to housing, electricity, healthcare, education and the environment, among others, have been brought to court by NGOs. It is also through public interest litigation that our human rights jurisprudence has developed.
But who funds this? In February this year, the Trump administration cut $440 million of USAid, with a profound effect on human rights protection in South Africa.
Not only is funding for healthcare workers and anti-retroviral treatment slashed, there also will be less money for public interest research and litigation, which will undermine human rights advocacy and protection in South Africa.
We all have an obligation
We should support these organisations to hold the various levels of government accountable. However, in our private capacity, we are not passive agents: the Constitution says that we all have an obligation to take steps where we can.
And we must.
Nelson Mandela University honorary doctorate Jody Kollapen, justice of the Constitutional Court, speaks out strongly on this, noting that although the courts play a vital part, the government and society share a joint responsibility.
“In time, future generations will ask … how could a society with a history such as ours, armed with the Constitution that we have and acutely aware of the dire consequences inequality and poverty hold for our future, have allowed poverty and inequality to endure for so long?” he asks.
Rights should not be something we celebrate once a year. And, whether we represent a business, an NGO or are one small voice, we each have a role to play in realising these rights.
Joanna Botha is a NRF-rated professor of public law in the Faculty of Law, Nelson Mandela University.
Crédito: Link de origem