The Foundation for Human Rights (FHR), in partnership with the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development (DOJ&CD) funded by the European Union through Sector Budget Support, is implementing the Socio-Economic Justice for All Programme (SEJA).

The SEJA programme is premised on a rights-based approach to the long-term eradication of poverty, in which people living in poverty are treated as free and autonomous agents who are empowered to assert their constitutional rights as active members of society. Previous surveys have shown that
marginalised and vulnerable people are not able to assert these basic human rights because of a lack of knowledge of their rights or of the mechanisms and institutionsthat have been established to assist them. The extent to which these rights are being promoted, protected and implemented by the state,
as well as the extent to which people have access to them in case of need, is highly uneven.

Programmes that attempt to redress this unevenness require reliable empirical data to understand the nature, location and depth of the problems experienced by members of marginalised and vulnerable groups with respect to understanding and asserting their rights. The DOJ&CD and the FHR
has undertaken this nation-wide survey as part of the SEJA programme, using an expanded questionnaire to measure the awareness of the Constitution of the population at large.

The SEJA Baseline Survey will make a significant contribution to the Department’s research activities. A better understanding of people’s awareness of, attitudes towards, and access to their constitutional rights will assist the Department to develop activities that promote citizens’ awareness of their rights,
and to promote participatory democracy.

The successful execution of the survey is a condition of the Technical and Administrative Provisions for Implementation of the Financing Agreement between the European Commission and the government of the Republic of South Africa.

This report details the implementation of the SEJA Baseline Survey and provides the main findings emanating from the study. A synopsis of previous research is presented as Appendix A, while a select bibliography of relevant documents is presented as Appendix B.

Continue reading below or download the full “SEJA Baseline Survey Report” resource.