In no legal system does human dignity play a greater role than in the South African one. The South African Constitution accords everyone ‘the right to have their dignity respected and protected’. It also recognizes human dignity as one of three values (the others are equality and freedom) upon which the Republic of South Africa was founded and which the South African Bill of Rights affirms.

Dignity as a right and as a value in South African law

Inconsistency with the right to dignity (like inconsistency with any other right in the Bill of Rights) is ground for a court to declare invalid a legal rule, whether it be a statutory, common-law or customary rule. Which legal rules are inconsistent with the right to dignity depends upon the scope of its application. That is: it depends upon whom the right binds. According to the Constitution, every one of the rights in its Bill of Rights, and thus also the right to dignity, binds the state. The Constitution does not, however, say whether the right also binds private persons. As with all the other rights in the Bill of Rights, the question whether the right to dignity binds private persons is left to the courts to determine, ‘taking into account the nature of the right and the nature of any duty imposed by the right’. Though this is not entirely clear, the South African Constitutional Court seems to have accepted that the right to dignity does bind private persons.