Abstract
Socioeconomic rights are very important in the South African context due to the history of apartheid and the high levels of poverty in South Africa. During apartheid, a large majority of South Africa’s population has not had access to basic socioeconomic rights. This changed in 1994 with the first democratic elections, the adoption of the new South African constitution in 1996 and the inclusion of a Bill of Rights. In this paper we discuss the development of and some of the objections to the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the constitution of South Africa. Furthermore, we discuss the role of religion as an extra-judicial entity regarding the socioeconomic rights of South African citizens. Against this background, we report on the results of an empirical study among Grade 10 and Grade 11 learners in secondary schools in three provinces in South Africa. We explore the understanding of socioeconomic rights that is present among this sample of learners in South Africa and investigate the relationship between the socioeconomic attitudes and certain background and religious variables. Regarding the understanding of socioeconomic rights, we found that these learners agree or strongly agree with all the items on socioeconomic rights. Gender plays a role though, with females scoring significantly higher on some of the socioeconomic scales. Agreement with the critical function of religion in society and an intellectual critical interest in religion are positively related to all four socioeconomic scales. Other religious factors, such as belief in God and an openness towards interreligious pluralism, showed mixed relations with socioeconomic rights. In the last section we briefly discuss the significance of the empirical results for the situation in South Africa.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Leatt (2017:67) writes: “Christianity is by far the largest religion in the country, claiming the adherence of about seventy-four per cent of the country’s inhabitants.”
- 2.
We hereby express our gratitude towards the University of Würzburg for hosting the data and also for the assistance provided by Susanne Döhnert.
- 3.
We thank Dr. Hennie Gerber for his assistance with the statistical analysis of the data.
- 4.
We interpret these average scores as follows: 1.00–1.79 = total disagreement; 1.80–2.59 = disagreement; 2.60–3.39 = ambivalence (2.60–2.99 = negative ambivalence; 3.00–3.39 = positive ambivalence); 3.40–4.19 = agreement; 4.20–5.0 = full agreement. We acknowledge that this is an arbitrary choice.
- 5.
One item, “Hiring people for salary or hourly work without paid vacation leave should be forbidden”, did not meet the minimum criteria for inclusion in any of the factors and was subsequently eliminated in the scale construction.
- 6.
The reliability of the religious attitude scales that we constructed is available in a footnote in Table 3.11.
- 7.
Our scale only included the two items on religious pluralism.
References
Bentley, W. (2013). Defining Christianity’s “prophetic witness” in the post-apartheid South African democracy. Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 31(1), 1–7.
Berger, E. (2003). The right to education under the South African Constitution. Columbia Law Review, 103(614), 614–661.
Burger, R., Louw, M., & Van der Watt, C. (2010). The challenge of poverty and social exclusion in post-apartheid South Africa. Considering the potential role of religious groups. In I. Swart, H. Rocher, S. Green, & J. Erasmus (Eds.), Religion and social development in post-apartheid South Africa (pp. 61–74). Cape Town: SunPress.
Dixon, R. (2007). Creating dialogue about socioeconomic rights. Strong-form versus weak-form judicial review revisited. Icon, 5(3), 391–418. https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/mom021.
Dreyer, J. S. (2005). Land reform. A key human rights issue and a challenge for religion in post-apartheid South Africa. Practical Theology in South Africa, 20(2), 1–18.
Eigelaar-Meets, I., Gomulia, C., & Geldenhuys, A. (2010). An emerging strategy of social capital formation. Opportunity and challenge for the religious sector. In I. Swart, H. Rocher, S. Green, & J. Erasmus (Eds.), Religion and social development in post-apartheid South Africa (pp. 45–60). SunPress: Cape Town.
Leatt, D. A. (2017). The state of secularism: Religion, tradition and democracy in South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Menell, N. G. (2017). Judicial enforcement of socioeconomic rights. A comparison between transformation projects in India and South Africa. Cornell International Law Journal, 49(3), 723–743.
Mubangizi, J. C. (2007). The protection and enforcement of socio-economic rights in Africa. Lessons from the south African experience. African Foundation for International Law, 15, 87–106.
Mubangizi, J. C., & Mubangizi, B. C. (2005). Poverty, human rights law and socio-economic realities in South Africa. Development South Africa, 22(2), 277–290.
Nieman, A. (2010). Churches and social development in South Africa. An exploration. In I. Swart, H. Rocher, S. Green, & J. Erasmus (Eds.), Religion and social development in post-apartheid South Africa (pp. 37–44). Cape Town: SunPress.
Plaatjies-Van Huffel, M.-A., & Vosloo, R. (Eds.). (2013). Reformed churches in South Africa and the struggle for justice: Remembering 1960–1990. Stellenbosch: African SUN MeDIA.
Statistics South Africa, Census 2001, pp. 24–30, http://www.statssa.gov.za/census/census_2001/ primary tables/RSAPrimary.pdf. Accessed 6 Dec 2017.
Steenkamp, A. J. (1995). The South African constitution of 1993 and the bill of rights. An evaluation in light of international human rights norms. Human Rights Quarterly, 17(101), 101–126.
Sunstein, C. R. (2000). Social and economic rights. Lessons from South Africa. Constitutional Forum, 11(4), 123–132.
Swart, I. (2011). Religion and social capital research in South Africa. Mapping an agenda in progress. In Religion and social problems (pp. 98–122). New York: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dreyer, J.S., Aziz, G. (2020). Religion and Socioeconomic Rights among the Youth of South Africa. In: Ziebertz, HG. (eds) International Empirical Studies on Religion and Socioeconomic Human Rights. Religion and Human Rights, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30934-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30934-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-30933-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-30934-3
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)