Reasonableness in Retreat? The Judgment of the South African Constitutional Court in Mazibuko v City of Johnnesburg

Abstract

Mazibuko v City of Johannesburg is the South African Constitutional Court's first judgment on the right of access to sufficient water. There is a perception that Mazibuko marks a retreat from the Constitutional Court's earlier socio-economic rights decisions. This comment broadly endorses this view. The Court's previous socio-economic rights decisions were marked by a willingness to apply an increasingly more searching standard of review. However, the Court's judgment in Mazibuko is marked by a high level of deference. There are factors that differentiate Mazibuko from the Court's earlier decisions, such as the fact that the complainants had not been excluded or overlooked by the relevant social program. These factors do not justify the level of deference applied in Mazibuko, but they do suggest that the implications of the judgment for the Constitutional Court's future socio-economic rights jurisprudence should not be overstated.