The rights of the individual, the rights of the community and their relationship

Russel Botman

The regime of human rights historically has tended to focus on individual rights, in such a way that community rights are marginalized or even excluded. The overriding principle of individuality, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and expressed in certain human rights debates, is informed by a particular understanding of humanity based on western and liberal Christian values.

Ann Elizabeth Mayer (University of Pennsylvania) correctly points out that the "newness" of community human rights should not be overstated, of course, since the right to self-determination can be traced back to the situation after World War I. However, Boutros Boutros-Ghali is contextually right in speaking of "new human rights". The time for the "new human rights" has come and peoples' right to self-determination, regarding their political, economic, spiritual, social and religious identity, cultural affairs and development, must be honoured.

There is also a certain kairos for community human rights. Contemporary attacks, whether political, military or economic, are directed against communities and not merely against individuals. Economic exploitation targets individuals, not in abstraction, but through their communities. The lines of community and the lines of human rights violations frequently coincide.

In this paper I explore a human rights option regarding the relationship between individual and community rights. First I provide a very restricted theological reflection; second, a contextual analysis with reference to the South African situation and third, a reference to the option God takes in this world.

Theological reflection

"I do not believe", says David Jenkins, "that the notion of human rights is at all biblical". He is right that the terminology of human rights is not to be found in biblical texts. This does not mean that the Bible does not provide an adequate basis for theological reflection on human rights. Having said that, I must also state that I am not convinced by proponents of "narrative" and "virtue" reflections who call human rights a "fiction" (Alasdair MacIntyre). It is not in the interest of Africa and other Third World nations to do away (Stanley Hauerwas) with human rights. Hauerwas considers "rights" as an indication that the North American liberal society has non-sustainable community, for such language creates a society of strangers. It is precisely at this point that the gift other cultures bring to the human rights debate can play a significant role.

I want to suggest that the West might consider a small gift we in Africa just could offer. It is the gift of ubuntu. A term difficult to translate into occidental languages. But it is the essence of being human, it declares that my humanity is caught up and inextricably bound up in yours... I am because I belong.¹

Key to the relationship between community and individual rights is the understanding of humanity (anthropology). What does it mean to be human? Africans see the essence of being human in relational terms. The human being is not only a personality but also a sociality. This is also the first thing we learn from the creation story. God created humanity in relationships.

The concrete person is a web of interactions, a network of operative relationships. A person is fashioned by historical, cultural, genetic, biological, social and economic infrastructures. These relationships are not mechanical: they allow for the individualization of the person without damaging the dignity of the human being. The dignity of human beings emanates from the network of relationships, from being in community. The human being created by God should not be reduced to the idea of a unique and free personal ego. Understood in terms of the creation story, human dignity is communal dignity.

We must recognize the social problem as primary for civilization and for Christianity. God's remedy for social problems is community (J. Moltmann). God created community. Dietrich Bonhoeffer derives community directly from relationship with God: "Social community is in essence given with community with God. The latter is not what leads to former. Community with God is not without social community, nor is social community without community with God."

Daniel W. Harding correctly points out that Bonhoeffer failed to differentiate between created sociality, i.e. secular community, and redeemed sociality, i.e., the church religious communities. Consequently, he privatized the notion of community and made it applicable only to the church, thereby excluding created sociality, based on the idea that Christian faith communities can be set apart from common human sociality. This is a very important observation which informs the current human rights debate in ecumenical circles.

The first phase of ecumenical concern with human rights questions, from the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948 until around the sixties, was dominated by justification for the community rights of "redeemed" sociality, that is the church and other religious communities. The question of religious freedom stood at the centre of ecumenical debates until the realization of the connectedness of religious rights to other individual human rights dawned. We must now again rekindle the flames of an earlier communitarian understanding of human rights, but this time corrected by the recognition that the rights of created community is as fundamental as the religious rights of "redeemed community".

Community, as a gift of God in creation, is not only applicable to the church. It is a broad concept that is clearly in line with the African notion of ubuntu as a gift of God (Modimo) that is unalienably guaranteed in the power (Seriti) of God's presence. The dignity of human beings, the chief reason for human rights, arises from the idea of persons being created in the image of God; the dignity of communities proceeds from the notion of human beings being created in relation to God the creator. Thus, community first and foremost means being in community with the Creator.

South African individual and community rights

Every year people throughout South Africa celebrate Constitution Week, to remember that momentous day in March 1996 when President Mandela signed the new constitution, which is regarded as one of the most modern and most democratic constitutions in the world. The genesis of this constitution reflects the very important debate between liberal individualists, communist collectivists and conservative white cultural representatives. The end result included a clause 30 on cultural, language and religious rights:

Everyone has the right to use the language and to participate in the cultural life of their choice, but no one exercising these rights may do so in any manner inconsistent with any provision of the Bill of Rights.

1. persons belonging to a cultural, religious or linguistic community may not be denied the right, with other members of their community to:
   1. enjoy their culture, practice their religion and use their language; and
   2. form, join and maintain cultural, religious and linguistic associations and other organs of civil society.
2. This right may not be exercised in any manner inconsistent with any provision of the Bill of Rights.

This commitment is further strengthened by clause 185, which provides for the establishment of a Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights for Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities:

1. The primary objects of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities are:
   1. to promote respect for the rights of cultural, religious and linguistic communities;
   2. to promote and develop peace, friendship, humanity, tolerance and national unity amongst cultural, religious and linguistic communities, on the basis of equality, non-discrimination and free association; and
   3. to recommend the establishment of recognition, in accordance with national legislation, of a cultural or other council or councils for a community or communities in South Africa.
2. The Commission has the power, as regulated by national legislation, necessary to achieve its primary objects, including the power to monitor, investigate, research, educate, lobby, advise and report on issues concerning the rights of cultural, religious and linguistic communities.
3. The Commission may report any matter which falls within its powers and function to the Human Rights Commission for investigation.
4. The Commission has the additional powers and functions prescribed by national legislation.

The South African Constitution recognizes that individual human rights are not enough. The weakness of individual rights is glaringly visible when the rights of first peoples or indigenous peoples are concerned. Coming after the event of oppression, exploitation, torture and marginalization, individual rights can serve the interest of the powerful, the perpetrator and the advantaged. In South Africa we have seen how difficult it is to deal with the land claims of communities who were forcefully removed from their land by the apartheid regime. The land now belongs to a second generation or a totally unrelated owner who paid well for the land and property taken from people. The situation is made even more difficult for a mere individual rights approach by the fact that tribes, clans and communities claim their land as the land of their people end not as individual property.

An interesting feature of the debate in South Africa is that the insistence on community rights came from conservative white or Afrikaner political and cultural sectors. Originally, they wanted to have their own homeland and rule by self-determination within the borders of South Africa. Later on they compromised by settling for the idea of a cultural commission protecting cultural, religious and linguistic rights.

As a result, many South Africans see community rights as the agenda of conservatives interested in protecting apartheid communities over and against the national community. We are faced with the question of how to give support to the idea of community rights without playing into the hands of a neo-apartheid ideology! I suggest we do that by drawing a distinction between the essence of a community and the functions or tasks of communities (Wolfgang Huber makes this distinction) The task of communities within a participatory democracy is to contribute to the well-being of society at large and not only to care selfishly for one's own community at the risk of others

The inclusion of cultural protection in the Bill of Rights was strongly questioned by feminist scholars and women in South Africa They reminded us that there are also oppressive forms of communitarianism. Culture and religion are not always protective of all members and equity can be a major problem Many feminist theorists, while sharing the critique of the liberal abstract view of the human person, warn against the sometimes oppressive nature of community. Seyla Beenhabib differentiates between participative communitarians like Michael Walzer (who accommodates individual rights) and integrative or organic communitarians like MacIntyre (who disregards the necessary demands for equality by women and others).

Crucial to the quest for community in human rights debates is how to keep justice and equality central in the struggle for human dignity. Communitarians face the temptation to dissolve the person in society or culture if we develop an image of the human person based on a functional understanding of life that does not allow conflicts between people and their society or culture. The community then becomes totalitarian and the human being a robot, a cog in the system. This leads to what Leonardo Boff calls "the imperialism of social roles, social structures, and social functions".

How can one avoid this temptation? By adopting the principle of a participatory model of community The community is not sacred, it has to be equal, just and participatory to claim its own right for protection and equality in the broader national or international community Through participation, members of that community collectively form and transform its life and structure.

Community rights and God's justice

Justice is of course one of the most important theological categories for community rights. Wolfgang Huber argues that human rights is based on the biblical notion of justice. Justice is partly personal, but actually communitarian.

As long as we continue to take our point of departure from an individualistic understanding of the human person, we will tend towards hierarchical thinking in human rights debates. In an unequal and unjust world, individualism in human rights tend to protect the powerful and not the weak.

The church has a very important contribution to make, in establishing justice as the nature of God. As a consequence of the declaration by the LWF and particularly by WARC that the theological justification of apartheid is heresy, the Confession of Belhar was adopted in South Africa in 1986. This confession makes the point very clear:

"We believe

• that God has revealed himself as the One who wishes to bring about justice and true peace among people; that in a world full of injustice and enmity he is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged and that he calls his church to follow him in this; that he brings justice to the oppressed and gives bread to the hungry; that he frees the prisoner and restores sight to the blind; that he supports the downtrodden, protects the stranger, helps orphans and widows and blocks the path of the ungodly; that for him pure and undefiled religion is to visit the orphans and the widows in their suffering; that he wishes to teach his people to do what is good and to seek the right;
• that the church must therefore stand by people in any form of suffering and need, which implies, among other things, that the church must witness against and strive against any form of injustice, so that justice may roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream;
• that the church as the possession of God must stand where he stands, namely against injustice and with the wronged; that in following Christ the church must witness against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others."

The privileged few seek their protection in individual human rights, while impoverished people have to find refuge in community rights. It is not enough to emphasize ethnicity, culture and race as factors determining the identity of communities to the exclusion of class as a category of community. Class has instituted two separate and exclusive communities: the rich and the poor. Our concern that globalization of the economies of the world will make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer has tremendous importance for communitarian thinking. Poor communities will survive on the strength of their internal solidarity and the preferential option of advantaged communities. This constitutes a right and not merely a privilege. This right derives from the nature of God who created community. In a world of injustice God, in a special way, is revealed as the God of the oppressed, the wronged and the destitute. It is the obligation, not only of the church, but of all humanity to protect the rights of impoverished communities.

The current international process of welfare and social security reform does not augur well for the human dignity of such communities.

Conclusion

The full range of human rights language is not a product of the Enlightenment, which is alien to Christianity. There are clear biblical roots that demand the continuation and extension of human rights in the contemporary world. As a language it can assist in communicating Christian justice concerns to a wide variety of communities. As a concrete claim of human dignity, it serves the liberating God and oppressed peoples everywhere.

Unfortunately, the call for rights of the third generation has not been taken far enough. These rights are not legally settled in all contexts and geographical locations. Shifts in the debate will continue to give birth to new generations of rights. The role of the ecumenical movement, from the 1948 Assembly of the WCC, through the sixties (when social and economic rights entered the scene), evident in the 1976 WARC document, "Theological Basis of Human Rights", and the 1977 LWF declaration, "Theological Perspectives on Human Rights", clearly testifies to the truly theological nature of human rights. We are now challenged to take that task further, and to do what is already long overdue, i.e. to develop a Christian Declaration of Human Rights that takes the idea of created community just as seriously as it takes the rights of redeemed community.

Russel Botman of the Uniting Reformed Church of Southern Africa lectures in religion and theology at the University of the Western Cape and is President of the Southern Africa Alliance of Reformed Churches (SAARC).

Notes