The celebration of Human Rights Day is an important opportunity for South Africans to reflect on the critical significance of the Bill of Rights. One of these rights is the right to human dignity, which is affirmed as a founding value in Section 10 of the Constitution.

In her lecture titled "Human Rights – And Dignity for All?" Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela expressed cautious optimism about the ability of the values of the Constitution to engage with the serious challenge of inequality.

"We need to do this in a way that supports the right to human dignity for the majority of South Africans."

Gobodo-Madikizela, holder of the Research Chair in Social Change and Transformation at Stellenbosch University (SU), delivered this lecture at one of the series of Transformation Talks hosted by the Transformation Office.

"We need a new paradigm to talk about the everyday existential assaults on the human dignity of marginalised South Africans. A useful step in this direction would be to redefine poverty as violence. Poverty is a violence against the dignity of many South Africans," Prof Gobodo-Madikizela said.

"Thinking in this way about the challenge of inequality and the poverty it breeds, it shines the spotlight on the real perpetrators of this violence – the political leaders who, over the last two decades, have done very little to alleviate it."

Drawing from studies of survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants, she explained how the pain of past violations of human rights is passed on to the post-apartheid generation. She said this could not be wished away with calls for people to "move on."

"Equally significant in the South African situation is this yawning void of emptiness in the lives of most South Africans, the grinding assault on people's human dignity and the feelings of shame and humiliation that this evokes."

Prof Pumla Gobodo Madikizela is the holder of the Research Chair in Social Change and Transformation. She also holds the SARChI Chair for Historical Trauma and Memory and a research fellowship at the University of the Free State.