Die reg op godsdiensvryheid in Suid-Afrikaanse skole
PDF

Keywords

right to religious freedom
public schools
private schools

Abstract

The right to religious freedom in South African schools

In general, religion is to be regarded as one of the most important aspects of human life and as one of the key human functions that distinguishes a human being from the rest of creation. For this reason, religious freedom is deemed by many to be the “first liberty" to be protected by any Bill of Rights. However, protecting everyone’s religious freedom on an equal and equitable basis is sometimes easier said than done. In the USA, for instance, in an effort to protect the religious rights and freedom of all, a wall of separation between state and religion was implemented on the basis of the US "establishment clause”: the American State is compelled to maintain a neutral stance as far as religious matters are concerned. In the eyes of some representatives of the US academe, this approach to the protection of religious freedom ultimately led to the US government’s becoming the “enemy of religion” in American schools. In the 1998 case of Wittmann v Deutscher Schulverein, Pretoria the court confirmed that the drafters of the South African constitution steered the issue of religious freedom on a different course to that of the United States. In Wittmann it was held that the South African constitution did not create a wall of separation between church and state (i.e. schools) and that it is the constitutional right of every person (i.e. the learner and the teacher) at school to "entertain such beliefs as a person chooses". The court also held that everyone at school has the right to confess his/her faith and to participate freely in religious worship and religious practice (and even teach and disseminate religion) at school.

https://doi.org/10.4102/koers.v65i4.485
PDF

Copyright information

  • Ownership of copyright in terms of the Work remains with the authors.
  • The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the Work, provided attribution is given to the place and detail of original publication, as set out in the official citation of the Work published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the Work on the authors’ or their institutions’ websites or institutional repositories.

Publication and user license

  • The authors grant the title owner and the publisher an irrevocable license and first right and perpetual subsequent right to (a) publish, reproduce, distribute, display and store the Work in any form/medium, (b) to translate the Work into other languages, create adaptations, summaries or extracts of the Work or other derivative works based on the Work and exercise all of the rights set forth in (a) above in such translations, adaptations, summaries, extracts and derivative works, (c) to license others to do any or all of the above, and (d) to register the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for the Definitive Work.
  • The authors acknowledge and accept the user licence under which the Work will  be published as set out in https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (Creative Commons Attribution License South Africa)
  • The undersigned warrant that they have the authority to license these publication rights and that no portion of the copyright to the Work has been assigned or licensed previously to any other party.

Disclaimer: The publisher, editors and title owner accept no responsibility for any statement made or opinion expressed by any other person in this Work. Consequently, they will not be liable for any loss or damage sustained by any reader as a result of his or her action upon any statement or opinion in this Work. 
In cases where a manuscript is NOT accepted for publication by the editorial board, the portions of this agreement regarding the publishing licensing shall be null and void and the authors will be free to submit this manuscript to any other publication for first publication.

Our copyright policies are author-friendly and protect the rights of our authors and publishing partners.