#HackTheConstitution on 12th May

Twenty years ago, on the 8th May 1996, The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa was approved by parliament and handed over to the Constitutional Court . It would be almost another year of amends and process until it was formally adopted, but the date remains significant nonetheless. Now, Parliament is considering major changes and has opened up a channel for members of the public to have their say on what they think needs to be reworded.

We all know why the constitution is under the spotlight: on 31st March President Jacob Zuma was found to have failed to uphold, defend and respect the document that forms the supreme law of our land by not complying with the findings of Public Protector Thuli Madonsela over the Nkandla affair.

But Constitutional Law is a notoriously difficult thing to fully understand and follow. Explain, if you will, in plain English the ConCourt’s most recent decision to award Nkosana Makate the rights to a mobile phone service Vodacom developed on his idea. No single national news outlet (as far as we can tell) covered the judgement in detail - probably because it largely hinged on an obscure distinction between “ostensible authority” and “estoppel” (What’s that? - Ed).

Understanding the constitution should be easy for everyone, even if you don’t know what estoppel means. And we want to build something that will achieve that.

“We” is a loose alliance of people from Hacks/Hackers Johannesburg, TEDxJohannesburg (http://www.tedxjohannesburg.com) and Design Share Party (http://thedesignshareparty.com/). We have the text of the constitution and its amendments, we have the full text of every judgement made by the Constitutional Court over the last 20 years. We have lawyers, designers - we even have graffiti artists waiting in the wings to help launch whatever it is we build.

What we need are ideas, writers, translators and coders who want to help make something that will assist everyone to understand what the constitution is, what it means and why it’s so important when someone in power fails to uphold it.

To get things started, we’re meeting up at JoziHub (http://www.jozihub.org) on 12th May at 6pm. If you’re interested in finding out more and committing to a few hours at a later for some practical work to help build it, let us know by signing up here.