30 years on: South Africa's Constitution celebrated at parliamentary colloquium

Ahead of the 16th Annual Thabo Mbeki Africa Day Lecture in Cape Town taking place this weekend, Parliament and the University of South Africa (UNISA) hosted a joint colloquium on “Celebrating 30 Years of South Africa’s Constitution in a rapidly changing world”.

The colloquium, held at the National Assembly, forms part of the national commemorative programme marking 30 years of the Constitution of the democratic Republic of South Africa.

The engagement brought together more than 250 participants from various sectors of society, including former president Thabo Mbeki, the patron of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation.

The 16th Annual Thabo Mbeki Africa Day Lecture will take place on Saturday at the Century City Conference Centre by Dr Kayode Fayemi, a former governor of Ekiti State, Nigeria.

Framed under the theme, “Rebuilding African Unity in an Age of Fragmentation: Sovereignty, Solidarity, and the Renewal of Institutions”, the programme positions Africa Day as a strategic platform for reflection, dialogue, and agenda-setting, with engagements spanning economic, constitutional, cultural, academic, diplomatic, and public spheres, bringing together diverse stakeholders to reflect on African unity and renewal.

Among the activities anchoring the main event are Friday’s colloquium and a post-lecture engagement session with young people on Monday, May 25, at the UNISA Parow campus.

Speaker of the National Assembly, Thoko Didiza, who delivered one of the key speeches, said that as Parliament and a member of the Pan-African Parliament, Africa Day is not just a day to remember and celebrate, but it is the day to take stock of how much lies ahead to realise the Africa envisioned for the future.

“Agenda 2063, a broad participatory vision, enabled us to reimagine the Africa we want and further outlined how these can be achieved in various sectors. The Pan-African Parliament, which brings together public representatives from Member Parliaments, has developed model laws that have brought harmony to certain legislative frameworks across the continent. 

“All of these indicate the journey we have travelled in putting the foundation from which we can build the Africa we want,” Didiza said.

“Here in South Africa, as we reflect on Africa Day, in a context where we mark 30 years since the country promulgated the Constitution, the supreme law that laid the foundation of the South African constitutional democracy we want.

“In recognising this special occasion, the National Assembly held a webinar on 10 May 2026 in which we reflected on our own journey, its success, and challenges. Today, we are partnering with UNISA to host this colloquium as part of the build-up to the main Africa Day event taking place on May 23, 2026, here in Cape Town. 

“This colloquium will focus on the contemporary issues facing Africa and the role that Africa must play to shape Africa’s future and functioning democracies,” Didiza said.

Didiza said that 30 years into a democratic dispensation, the foundations of strong institutions have been laid, which form the architecture of the country we want. 

“We have a legislative sector that has played an important role in developing legislation that is transformative. Today, we have a strong judiciary that dispenses justice and builds confidence in society that all are equal before the law. 

“We have and still are progressively ensured that human rights of all citizens are respected through our various constitutional bodies and our civil society. Our government has been able to develop policies and execute programmes that address the needs of our society. We can look back with admiration at the steps taken to build a functional state,” Didiza said.

“In appreciating the foundation and the building blocks that have deepened our democracy, I do not doubt that this colloquium will reflect on the progress and challenges we still face from the perspectives of different members of society present here today.”

UNISA Vice-Chancellor, Professor Puleng LenkaBula, spoke of Mbeki’s historic ‘I am an African’ poem, which she said was not just a performative declaration, but an ethical declaration that wove together threads of our identity and our past.

“President Mbeki declared, ‘I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home… I’m a grandchild of the men and women who were torn from the continent of Africa... I come from those who were transported from India and China’, and all of us understand and know that speech.

“In that single sweeping affirmation, President Mbeki refused the logic of apartheid fragmentation. He insisted that ‘I’, of the new South Africa, was multiple, was wounded, yet indivisible,” LenkaBula said.

She also said that the Constitution, when first adopted, gave legal form to what he had envisioned.

“Yet, we must ask, three decades later, has the constitutional promise of a united democratic, non-racial, non-sexist, and prosperous South Africa been fulfilled, for all who uttered that ‘I’, or has a gap between the constitutional text and the lived concrete realities become a chasm across which many struggle to cross,” LenkaBula said.

“When we remember the foundation of our Constitution and the promise of a new and better South Africa, what do we see? Do we see South African promise in the making? Or we see a dream deferred?

“These are some of the questions that we're going to talk about today, that the intellectuals and communities in our society must reflect on,” LenkaBula said.

theolin.tembo@inl.co.za