By Marianne Thamm —
South African civil society has received a substantial shot in the arm with the announcement on Thursday of a $25 million fund jointly established by the Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies, which aims to “advance constitutionalism” for next 10 years. The announcement comes in the wake of what many view as a pushback by the ruling party against constitutional democratic rule, including the undermining of the NPA, attacks on the Public Protector and the stacking of the Judicial Services Commission with compliant political voices.
The venue selected for the announcement of the new $25 million (around R285 million) joint “Constitutionalism Fund” was the District Six Homecoming Centre in Cape Town’s CBD, significant for its symbolic remembrance of the country’s painful apartheid past. But the country’s present, as well as its future is today contained and enshrined in the Constitution, the bedrock of the country’s young democracy.
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