ABSTRACT
The Western Cape’s provincial constitution of 1997 re-emerged from obscurity in 2019 when a provision relating to the position of a Commissioner for Environment was sought to be removed. It made news again in 2020 when, after a lapse of 23 years, the first Commissioner for Children was appointed to this constitutional office. The provincial competence to adopt a provincial constitution formed part and parcel of the negotiations (1993–94) to establish a hybrid-federal system of government within a new constitutional democracy. The 1996 national Constitution (NC) sets very restricted parameters in terms of which a provincial legislature can adopt a provincial constitution (PC), and the scope for variations from the NC has been narrowed down further by the Constitutional Court. The strictures of the general framework have been tested by the provincial legislatures of KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, to which people now turn.
