The ICESCR campaign is a civil society campaign to advocate for the ratification of the ICESCR and the OP-CESCR), by the
South African Government.

This project set out to develop a tool with which to monitor and evaluate the progressive realisation of socio-economic rights in South Africa. The aim is twofold: firstly, to move towards an agreement on what progressive realisation of socio-economic rights means in South Africa – to what end and over what time span – and secondly, to develop a method of monitoring and evaluating progress made to date and in the future.

This paper conducts an in-depth analysis of the policy developments for social security before and after 1994. This analysis enables an assessment to be made on how far the constitutional obligation to progressively realise the right to social security and social assistance for those who can’t provide for themselves has been realised, and the extent to which this obligation has in fact driven the policy making process.

This paper calls for the roll out of a pilot of BIG in South Africa by government in partnership with other social partners as a demonstration of their commitment to finding empirically- driven, rather than ideologically – driven, policy options.

This paper’s objective is to inform South African debates about the feasibility of introducing a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG).

This paper adds to the growing resource of research reports about the financing of a BIG in South Africa that have proliferated since the start the of pandemicinduced recession in 2020.

This exercise encourages public accountability in support of the constitutional commitment to advance socio-economic rights. The relationship between the positive duties of the State in Sections 26(2) and 27(2) and the general limitations clause is a complex one. However, the State's positive duties are defined in terms of the adoption of reasonable measures, as we will see in the following section. If the State's conduct or omissions are found to be unreasonable at the outset of the constitutional inquiry, it is difficult to imagine situations in which it could still succeed in establishing a reasonable limitation of the right under Section 36.