The Trans in Transformative Constitutionalism

Abstract

This paper operationalises the prefix trans in transformative constitutionalism to think expansively about post-apartheid freedoms. It uses the prefix to challenge limited conceptions of how freedom and transformation are read into the post-apartheid moment. In South Africa, often, debates about transformation are debates about race, and its linkages to class. This has created what looks like “first” and “secondary” struggles, with race being first and struggles like gender and gender equality regarded as secondary. This paper argues for a more complicated articulation of post-apartheid freedoms that does not neglect other forms of struggle like gender. Using trans – both as in transgender, the lived realities, and as in trans as metaphor – this paper challenges simplistic ways of reading freedom in post-apartheid South Africa. Furthermore, understanding the concept of the human has had a troubled history in that the foundations of the human have meant white, male and Western. Therefore, this paper uses the prefix trans to grapple with the meaning of the human in the human rights that are part of the South African Constitution.