TRANSFORMATIVE CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE VALUE OF HUMAN DIGNITY IN INTERPRETING LEGISLATION TO PROMOTE WORKERS’ RIGHT TO SOCIAL SECURITY: Knoetze v Rand Mutual Assurance [2022] ZAGPJHC 4

Abstract

South Africa is still a country in transition and this is affirmed by the Preamble of the Constitution of South Africa, 1996, which “recognises the injustices of our past” and makes a commitment to establishing “a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental rights”. This constitutional commitment enjoins the courts to apply transformative principles to resolve legal problems by taking into account the values of the Constitution to achieve a just, democratic and egalitarian social order. This constitutional aspiration is evident in different parts of the Constitution, including the part that deals with interpretation of legislation in conformity with the spirit, purport and object of the Bill of Rights as in section 39(2) of the Constitution.

This extract is also indicative of the fact that the achievement of transformative constitutionalism when interpreting legislation in line with the Constitution is partly dependent on the promotion of the value of human dignity. This legal position has recently been given effect to by the Constitutional Court in the case of Mahlangu v Minister of Labour. In this case, the Constitutional Court reiterated the importance of transformative constitutionalism and the value of human dignity when it found, among other things, that section 1 of the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (130 of 1993) was unconstitutional for violating workers’ right to social security. (This finding was based on the fact that s 1 of COIDA excluded domestic workers from the “employee” definition for the purposes of claiming compensation emanating from occupational injuries).
It is against this background that this note analyses the extent to which transformative constitutionalism and the value of human dignity also serves as the basis for the court’s judgment in the case of Knoetze v Rand Mutual Assurance ([2022] ZAGPJHC 4), despite the fact that the court did not acknowledge these constitutional features in its judgment. This case note does not intend to analyse the manner in which the court interpreted COIDA to promote workers’ right to social security. Instead, it investigates the extent to which transformative constitutionalism and the value of human dignity could also serve as a rationale for the judgment of the court. The first part of this note analyses transformative constitutionalism and the value of human dignity when interpreting legislation to promote the right to social security. The second part dissects the case of Knoetze v Rand Mutual Assurance, and the third and last part analyses the extent to which transformative constitutionalism and the value of human dignity could serve as a basis for the judgment of the court, even though the court did not refer to them in its judgment.