9 MONTHS AWAY
The drafters pressed on with their task. They were assisted by the technical refinement team headed by Canadian lawyer Phil Knight – the only non-South African to take part in the negotiations – and a team of South African lawyers. His role was precisely to be an outside eye in terms of the clarity and accessibility of the language. Drafting provisions in plain language was part of the CA’s ideal of producing a Constitution capable of being understood by all.
We were breaking ground and devising strategies and that led to some pretty heated discussion. Just as the politicians had to negotiate through their political differences so we had to negotiate words.
Philip Knight
then Head of the Technical Refinement Team
In September 1995, the Constitutional Assembly’s management Committee convened a Technical Team to prepare working drafts, the first of which would bring together all of the remaining formulations and proposals. The call for “plain language”, while apparently unprecedented in Constitution drafting, was not surprising, as the language of the Interim Constitution, and particularly its Bill of Rights, had been criticised as inaccessible. In a critique of the Interim Constitution, linguist Ailsa Stewart-Smith wrote as follows:
The language used in the Interim Constitution is simpler than in previous statutes, but this improvement is neither consistent nor extensive enough.
Ailsa Stewart-Smith
Linguist
Willie Hofmeyr, then an MP, had been promoting the concept of plain language as an instrument of legal and social transformation for some time, and had persuaded the then Minister of Justice, Dullah Omar, to host a conference on the topic in March 1995. In his opening comments, the Minister set out the argument that would justify the call for plain language to be used in the Constitution:
We must create a culture of human rights that gives South Africans both the confidence and an internalised understanding of their rights and role in society… Clear, simple, understandable communication is a whole lot more than just something we should be dreaming about. It is an absolute and critical necessity for democracy. People have a right to understand the laws that govern them, to understand court proceedings in matters that affect them, to understand what government is doing in their name.
Dullah Omar
then Minister of Justice
