“It is apparent from the preamble of the Constitution that one of the basic objectives of our constitutional enterprise is the establishment of a democratic and open government in which the people shall participate to some degree in the law-making process.”

In a recent Briefing Paper (No 578, Constitutional Delinquency) we analyzed various ways in which the government has been deviating from its constitutional duties, noting that “some of its policy and legislative decisions suggest that it sees the Constitution as an obstacle to be circumvented or even to be ignored entirely.”

Fortunately, this is generally not the case where Parliament and the legislative process is concerned. Even after nearly 30 years of democratic law-making, when it might have been expected that abuses would have crept in, that short-cuts would have become the norm, or that public involvement would have been sidelined, we still have one of the world’s most strongly participative approaches to the crafting of legislation.

Paper by the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference Parliamentary Liaison Office