Pierre de Vos - It is not always easy to hold an unpopular or minority view. It is even more difficult to hold a minority view on the emotive subject of religious belief and organised religion. When you happen to be a vulnerable and impressionable child, indoctrinated by parents and subjected to relentless peer pressure, it becomes even more difficult to hold any opinion of your own on the matter. It is for this reason that the right of children not to believe in a specific God or in specific religious...
SACSIS caught up with constitutional law expert Prof. Pierre de Vos, author of the blog, Constitutionally Speaking, to talk about how the South African constitution could be applied to deal with South Africa’s most pressing challenge, our country’s inequality. On the question of whether our constitution could be applied to encourage more redistributive measures, de Vos argues that the constitution doesn’t have the power to change South Africa’s economic policies....
Jane Duncan - A significant debate has arisen between Deputy Minister of Correctional Services Ngoako Ramatlhodi and the University of Cape Town’s Pierre de Vos on the appropriateness of South Africa remaining a constitutional state. In an article in The Times newspaper, Ramatlhodi argued that the supremacy of the constitution is disempowering the democratically elected government, whose decisions are second-guessed by a judiciary that still remains largely untransformed. Ramatlhodi...