The protection of religious rights in South Africa’s transitional constitution

Abstract

This article explains in outline how religious rights and freedoms are protected in South Africa's transitional constitution. It not only deals with these rights and freedoms as such, but also with related rights and freedoms which amplify and enhance constitutional entitlements in the religious sphere. The operation of section 14 of the constitution (in which religious rights and freedoms are mentioned by name) and o f related provisions is also discussed with reference to the operation of the bill of rights as a whole. The freedom of religion provisions in the constitution are furthermore assessed in view of:

  • a clause proposed as an addendum to a Declaration on Religious Rights and Responsibilities approved and adopted by a National Inter- Faith Conference held under the auspices of the South African Chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, and (to a lesser extent)
  • certain universally accepted standards for the protection of religious rights and freedoms.

Specific articles of the Declaration on Religious Rights and Responsibilities itself are also taken into account but the declaration as a whole is not considered.

https://doi.org/10.4102/koers.v59i2.662
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.