One of the defining features of apartheid was the way in which the National Party and its officials stripped millions of people of human dignity: through forced removals, by witholding the basic services all human beings need to keep warm, to keep clean, to eat and to learn, by denying people rights to grieve and bury relatives.

This is one of the reasons human dignity occurs so early and prominently in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which says: 

“Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.” 

The Constitution’s keywords are “everyone” and “respected and protected”. There are no ifs and buts. There is no reference to dignity being contingent upon “progressive realisation” or “available resources”. Indeed, dignity is not even classified as a right: it is recognised by the Constitution as “inherent” to everyone.

It is absolute.

The Bill of Rights says: ‘Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.’ (Photo: Leila Dougan)

For these reasons, Arthur Chaskalson, our celebrated first Chief Justice, described “respect for human dignity, and all that flows from it, as an attribute of life itself, and not a privilege granted by the state”.  

If dignity is an “attribute of life” it must mean that taking away dignity is like taking away a part of life itself.

Our first Chief Justice, Arthur Chaskalson. (Photo: Gallo Images / Media24)

That’s why it’s so tragic that the ANC, the police and large parts of the government have so quickly forgotten about dignity and unflinchingly adopted the callous behaviours of our past masters. In some ways they have acted even worse.

Last week saw three stark examples.

In Alberts Farm Conservancy, a park in the west of Johannesburg, a group of homeless people had their shelters demolished and their little property stolen during a raid by the Johannesburg Metro Police Department and the SAPS. The law enforcers did not even keep an inventory of what they threw into the removal trucks. Stephan de Beer, the director of the Centre for Faith and Community at the University of Pretoria, told us: “What happened is terrible and almost a daily occurrence in our cities.”

In Alberts Farm Conservancy a group of homeless people had their shelters demolished, and the little that they had was stolen. (Photo: Mark Heywood)

And yet the homeless are humans. They have rights. They are entitled to their dignity – if nothing else.

On another front, parts of civil society, several Cabinet ministers and political parties stepped up their assault on the dignity of African migrants, by intimidating them and making them fearful about accessing essential health services. 

Political leaders, including the President, whose job involves swearing an oath of fealty to the Constitution, were silent.

Then on Friday, the families of 21 poor children who died in the Enyobeni Tavern disaster, were fobbed off with implausible causes of death, denied their rights to see the autopsy results of their children and told to make applications under the Promotion of Access to Information Act.

The Enyobeni Tavern in Scenery Park, East London, where 21 poor children died. (Photo : Gallo Images / Daily Maverick / Felix Dlangamandla)

But the fault lies not just with the government. It’s within us: it’s about the behaviours of rich people towards poor people; South Africans towards black foreigners; homefull towards homeless; propertied towards poor; white towards black.

Some people may not like or be afraid of illegal immigrants, homeless people, criminals, substance users, but that is not justification to rob them of dignity. As one doctor put it last week in response to Phopi Ramathuba’s rant:

“Is this allowed because of politics? 

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“Because the precedent set for that means we no longer need to treat suspects, prisoners, intoxicated and abusive patients with dignity, if the circumstances resulting in their need for healthcare in our hospitals is politically weighted or systemically influenced.”

Read in Daily Maverick: “Snatching away Mandela’s gift of health and the return of medical apartheid” 

Our complicity for other people’s indignity lies in what we choose not to see, not to comment on, not to question about our abnormal environments. It’s in the way we’ve made peace with stark inequalities, adjusted to the abnormal. It’s in many of our behaviours and omissions. It’s linked to our racism and classism. 

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu talked about ‘righteous anger as a tool of justice’ and asked us to ‘be appalled’. (Photo: EPA / Georg Hochmuth)

In a book of conversations about Joy with the Dalai Lama, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu talked about “righteous anger as a tool of justice” and asked us to “be appalled”, adding that “it would be awful if we looked on all that horrendousness and we said, Ah, it doesn’t really matter”.  

So, we should ask, does dignity matter, what does it cost us to treat each other with dignity: to see each other, to have compassion?

Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.
(Photo: Chester Makana / Mukurukuru Media)

Alternatively, what will it cost us to continue to deny other people their dignity? What happens when our society once more ceases to respect the dignity of so many people? It reflects an attitude that thinks that some people are less equal, less human, than us. Indignity inflicts trauma. It brutalises. That way violence and genocide lie.

So, what does it require to respect others’ dignity? 

It means to live ubuntu and accept accountability for our actions. Not because the Constitution requires it, but because we are equals in society, who depend on each other. Because we are all human. This is a conversation people in South Africa need to start urgently, before it’s too late. DM/MC