TESSA DOOMS | A well-meaning state is seen by care for citizen's human dignity

South Africans have an interesting relationship with death. As we participate or watch people’s mourning practices we have expectations of high levels of respect, reverence and care to be shown in how we talk, act and even dress during the sombre rituals of death and mourning.

We have a firm commitment to dignity in death. Almost intolerant of people who do not act with caution to afford the memory of the dead honour and the respect processes to memorialise them, we strive for utmost dignity for the dead, yet in the same country many are denied dignity in life. Dignity is one of three supreme values that anchor the South African constitution.

Much is made in popular and political discourse about freedom and equality, the other values that underwrite the foundations of our national social contract. Without affording people dignity, South Africa ceases to exist. After emerging from histories of injustice, oppression, violence and long-standing intentional dehumanizsation of people, it was incumbent on all people of this nation to centre dignity as both an idea and practice. Dignity is non-negotiable.

Section 10 of the South African Constitution enjoins us to respect and protect the dignity of all people. So basic is the right to dignity that it is assumed as implicitly. The constitution does not make a fuss about giving people dignity.

Dignity is not earned. All people are worthy of dignity, not because of what we do but because of what we are: people. Dignity is the acknowledgement that someone is human.

It is the most basic and inalienable right. It is an ideal that finds its expression in how we enact the right to life. That a person is able to breath, eat, drink water, be safe, access health and healthcare and have shelter are crucial to ensuring the right to be alive.

A society that cannot keep people alive is no longer human. Angela Merkel, the former German Chancellor once said: “When it comes to human dignity we cannot make compromises”. A government’s primary task is to protect dignity and ensure life. In fact, its responsibility is to protect dignity through the acts of delivering basic services that are essential for people to be born, live and remain alive. A government that cannot keep the people of its nation alive and well is failing.

For millions of informal workers, it was an immediate loss of income and the ability to make a subsistence living to feed their families. Lockdowns threatened to make it impossible for shack dwellers to leave homes that had no basic services or regulation from harsh heat or extreme cold. Lockdowns further criminalised homelessness, making people targets of criminals and the state security forces in one heightened swoop.

Lockdowns were necessary to save lives, but without adequate infrastructure, services and social protections to support people, lockdowns meant to save lives also thrust too many people in SA, the most unequal country in the world, into more indignity not less.

The responses from more privileged parts of our society and the state demonstrated a warped understanding of dignity and a low regard for its preservation. Middle class and wealthy people opposed to lockdowns used the plight of poor and marginalised people to lament that by restricting opportunities for informal and low income work, the state was stripping people of the dignity of a job and the ability to access food and other necessary goods.

As well meaning as this argument may have been its flaw is reducing dignity to an externality like having a job. It infers that the rights to dignity and indeed life-giving things like food needed to be earned. It ignores the value of dignity as innate, unearned and the need to access food or water as basic for human life rather than an indulgence. Whether people eat or starve should never be a function of whether they are able to work.

If people are hungry, they should be fed. If they are cold, they should be covered. If they're unwell, they must access healthcare. Dignity and the right to life are not for sale. They are not earned, sold to the highest bidder. The costs of dignity must be shared in a way that is just, equal and non-discriminatory.