In Part 6 we are looking at someone who had a dream. We all have dreams but this dream has been written about countless of times and it has been etched into history books throughout the world. He was also the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Afterwards we are going to continue to look at the Bill of Rights (Section 25 – 27) .
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968)
The son, grandson, and great-grandson of Baptist ministers, Martin Luther King Jr., named Michael King at birth, was born in Atlanta and spent his first twelve years in the Auburn Avenue home that his parents, the Reverend Michael and Alberta Williams King, shared with his maternal grandparents, the Reverend Adam Daniel (A. D.) Williams and Jeannie Celeste Williams. After Rev. Williams’ death in 1931, his son-in-law became Ebenezer Baptist Church’s new pastor and gradually established himself as a major figure in state and national Baptist groups. The elder King began referring to himself (and later to his son) as Martin Luther King.
During his doctoral studies In 1951 King met and courted Coretta Scott, an Alabama-born Antioch College graduate who was then a student at the New England Conservatory of Music. On 18 June 1953 the two students were married in Marion, Alabama, where Scott’s family lived.
Although he considered pursuing an academic career, King decided in 1954 to accept an offer to become the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In December 1955 the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed and they selected King to head the new group. In his role as the primary spokesman, King utilized the leadership abilities he had gained from his religious background and academic training to forge a distinctive protest strategy that involved the mobilization of black churches and skillful appeals for white support. With the encouragement of other veteran pacifists, King also became a firm advocate of Mohandas Gandhi’s precepts of nonviolence, which he combined with Christian social gospel ideas.
Some of Dr. King’s most important achievements include:
· In 1955, he was recruited to serve as spokesman for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was a campaign by the African-American population of Montgomery, Alabama to force integration of the city’s bus lines. After 381 days of nearly universal participation by citizens of the black community, many of whom had to walk miles to work each day as a result, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in transportation was unconstitutional.
· In 1957, Dr. King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization designed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. He would serve as head of the SCLC until his assassination in 1968, a period during which he would emerge as the most important social leader of the modern American civil rights movement.
· In 1963, he led a coalition of numerous civil rights groups in a nonviolent campaign aimed at Birmingham, Alabama, which at the time was described as the “most segregated city in America.” The subsequent brutality of the city’s police, illustrated most vividly by television images of young blacks being assaulted by dogs and water hoses, led to a national outrage resulting in a push for unprecedented civil rights legislation. It was during this campaign that Dr. King drafted the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the manifesto of Dr. King’s philosophy and tactics, which is today required-reading in universities worldwide.
· Later in 1963, Dr. King was one of the driving forces behind the March for Jobs and Freedom, more commonly known as the “March on Washington,” which drew over a quarter-million people to the national mall. It was at this march that Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which cemented his status as a social change leader and helped inspire the nation to act on civil rights. Dr. King was later named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.”
· In 1964, at 35 years old, Martin Luther King, Jr. became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. His acceptance speech in Oslo is thought by many to be among the most powerful remarks ever delivered at the event, climaxing at one point with the oft-quoted phrase “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”
· Also in 1964, partly due to the March on Washington, Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act, essentially eliminating legalized racial segregation in the United States. The legislation made it illegal to discriminate against blacks or other minorities in hiring, public accommodations, education or transportation, areas which at the time were still very segregated in many places.
· The next year, 1965, Congress went on to pass the Voting Rights Act, which was an equally-important set of laws that eliminated the remaining barriers to voting for African-Americans, who in some locales had been almost completely disenfranchised. This legislation resulted directly from the Selma to Montgomery, AL March for Voting Rights lead by Dr. King.
· Between 1965 and 1968, Dr. King shifted his focus toward economic justice – which he highlighted by leading several campaigns in Chicago, Illinois – and international peace – which he championed by speaking out strongly against the Vietnam War. His work in these years culminated in the “Poor Peoples Campaign,” which was a broad effort to assemble a multiracial coalition of impoverished Americans who would advocate for economic change.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s less than thirteen years of nonviolent leadership ended abruptly and tragically on April 4th, 1968, when he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King’s body was returned to his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, where his funeral ceremony was attended by high-level leaders of all races and political stripes.
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_martin_luther_king_jr_biography/ http://www.thekingcenter.org/about-dr-king http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.
Bill of Rights
25. Property
1. No one may be deprived of property except in terms of law of general application, and no law may permit arbitrary deprivation of property.
2. Property may be expropriated only in terms of law of general application
a. for a public purpose or in the public interest; and
b. subject to compensation, the amount of which and the time and manner of payment of which have either been agreed to by those affected or decided or approved by a court.
3. The amount of the compensation and the time and manner of payment must be just and equitable, reflecting an equitable balance between the public interest and the interests of those affected, having regard to all relevant circumstances, including
a. the current use of the property;
b. the history of the acquisition and use of the property;
c. the market value of the property;
d. the extent of direct state investment and subsidy in the acquisition and beneficial capital improvement of the property; and
e. the purpose of the expropriation.
4. For the purposes of this section
a. the public interest includes the nation's commitment to land reform, and to reforms to bring about equitable access to all South Africa's natural resources; and
b. property is not limited to land.
5. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to foster conditions which enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis.
6. A person or community whose tenure of land is legally insecure as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices is entitled, to the extent provided by an Act of Parliament, either to tenure which is legally secure or to comparable redress.
7. A person or community dispossessed of property after 19 June 1913 as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices is entitled, to the extent provided by an Act of Parliament, either to restitution of that property or to equitable redress.
8. No provision of this section may impede the state from taking legislative and other measures to achieve land, water and related reform, in order to redress the results of past racial discrimination, provided that any departure from the provisions of this section is in accordance with the provisions of section 36(1).
9. Parliament must enact the legislation referred to in subsection (6).
26. Housing
1. Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing.
2. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right.
3. No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances. No legislation may permit arbitrary evictions.
27. Health care, food, water and social security
1. Everyone has the right to have access to
a. health care services, including reproductive health care;
b. sufficient food and water; and
c. social security, including, if they are unable to support themselves and their dependants, appropriate social assistance.
2. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of each of these rights.
3. No one may be refused emergency medical treatment.
Explanation:
Section 25: Property
No one can have their property taken away from them unless this is done according to a law.
Expropriating private property
This means the government takes a person's land away from them. Property can be expropriated by the government if:
- the government wants to use the land for public purposes
or - it is in the public's interest, for example, if the government needs the land for its land reform programme.
If the government takes land from a person they must pay this person for it. This is called compensation.
There are certain things to think about when a landowner and the government are deciding how much compensation to pay for the land. These are:
- the history of how the property was bought and what it was used for before
- how much the owner has improved the property
- what the property is being used for now
- the market value: what the price of the property would be if a private person or business bought it
- how much the government can pay: how much money the government has in its budget to pay for the property
- what the government wants to do with the property
Land Reform
Section 25 also deals with land reform. It says the government must make laws and take other steps, to help people or communities to get land to live on, and to claim back land, if they lost it after 1913 and they lost it because of an apartheid law. Up to December 1998, in such cases people were able to claim the land back or compensation for the land.
LAND AND HOUSING, Land restitution: access to land if your land was taken away by an apartheid law
Labour tenants
If a person has been living on land which they were not allowed to own because of apartheid laws, they will now be able to own this land or be paid compensation for it. An example of this is people who live on farms as labour tenants. The Extension of Security of Tenure Act has been passed by the government which gives labour tenants certain rights in terms of Section 25.
LAND AND HOUSING, Extension of Security of Tenure Act
Section 26: Right of access to housing
Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing. The government must take reasonable steps within its available resources to provide people with housing and access to land.
Limitations on this right
Section 26 says the government must take steps to provide housing 'within its available resources'. This means the government has a duty to provide what it can afford.
In a recent court case, Irene Grootboom took the government to court on grounds that Section 26 of the Constitution says people have a right to have access to housing. The Constitutional Court said there are three parts that make up the government's obligation to provide housing.
These are:
- what are reasonable measures that the government should take
- what steps should government take to steadily implement this right in stages over time
- what resources are available to make this possible
The Court ordered the government to take positive steps to meet its obligations under section 26(2) of the Constitution, particularly where people are living in inhumane conditions or crisis situations.
Evictions
No one can be evicted from their home or have their home demolished, unless a court has heard the person's case and decided that he or she must leave. In this case the court must give a court order.
LAND AND HOUSING: Extension of Security Act; Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act
Section 27: Right of access to health care, food, water and social security
Everyone has the right to have access to:
- health care services (including child birth facilities)
- enough food and water
- social security (which means support for people who can't support themselves or their dependants)
The government must pass laws and have policies that provide welfare assistance for the people who need it the most.
Limitations on these rights
Section 27 says the goverment must take steps 'within its available resources'. This means the government must only provide what it can afford. But, the section says the government must improve these services over time.
Everyone is allowed to have emergency medical treatment.
http://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/1996/96cons2.htm http://www.paralegaladvice.org.za/docs/chap01/04.html
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