It is tempting, when speaking to nostalgic racists who imagine an idyllic past that never actually existed, to point out only the obvious and profound differences between apartheid South Africa and post-apartheid South Africa.
This was an important part of the jurisprudential foundation of our common law, and many a talented lawyer could fight for natural justice by locating argument in the legal tradition that had been formed in South Africa over a long period of time. Again, the legal differences between then and now are big. We now live in a South Africa in which the exercise of state power is required to be justified. We have substituted parliamentary sovereignty for constitutional supremacy. We have parted ways with the norm of opacity and designed a constitutional order than insists instead on a commitment to transparency. There is a presumption in favour of freedom, and a presumption against the limiting of our freedoms.
In this context it is a mistake to romanticise excellent jurisprudence. Just as the common law in the first part of the last century was often a friend of victims so too, on paper, the constitutional model we ushered in in the 1990s is a friend of the poor. The rule of law means many things: no one is above the law and therefore everyone is equal before the law. It also means respecting the authority of the legal system, respect which is demonstrated when you follow the laws of the land, and you do so not out of fear but out of respect for the moral principles from which specific laws are derived.