DEFINING THE LIMITS OF PERMISSIBLE EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION AGAINST PERSONS LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS IN SOUTH AFRICA: HOFFMAN V. SOUTH AFRICAN AIRWAYS [2000] 12 BLLR 1365.
Perhaps the most positive and exciting aftermath of the apartheid era is the
construction of the new South Africa upon the foundation of a Constitution
and other legal instruments that are unanimous and unambiguous in two
respects. The first is in their proscription of unfair discrimination and the second
is in their permission of statutory and other measures aimed at eliminating the
effects of past discrimination on those groups of persons who were at the receiving
end of same. The provisions of these instruments as well as their tenor and
spirit reveal an unmistakable national resolve to break from a culture of racial
discrimination to a constitutionally protected culture of human rights for South
Africans of all ages, classes and colours. Without doubt, the most important of
those provisions is the equality clause of the Bill of Rights contained in the
second chapter of the Constitution. This probably follows from a realization of
the fact that equality is fundamental to “the maintenance and propagation of
human rights in a democratic body politic, particularly in an acutely divided
society” such as South Africa.