Towards a More Comprehensive Safety Net: an Examination of the Provision and Limitations Thereof, of the Right to Social Security in the Eastern Cape

This book critically analyzes the exclusionary nature of the national social security legislation which provides for the Constitutional right to social security. This is done with the intention of assessing the government?s efforts towards a more comprehensive social safety net. Firstly regional and international provision of the right is discussed to emphasize the importance of its realization in the Eastern Cape Province and nationally. The study evaluates the legal and administrative problems that hinder the people from accessing and fully realizing the right to social security. It further asses the legislative and administrative problems and causes thereof that have hindered the government in trying to make this right a living right. The exclusionary social security system is criticized on the basis that everyone is Constitutionally entitled to access social security if they can not provide for themselves. Some of the excluded people are the self-employed; unemployed and the poor. Remedies are then provided for the people to rely on when the state fails to act, or when it violates this fundamental human right to social security.