deliberately inflicted on him in an undertook to take all appropriate measures special duty towards children, this obligation institutional setting. Indeed, it would be to protect the child from violence. represents a powerful requirement on the unusual if the child did not have ambivalent emotions. The respondent has established that Courts throughout the world have shown special solicitude for protecting children state to act. As part of its pedagogical mission, the from what they have regarded as the Department [of Education] sought to the prohibition of corporal punishment is potentially injurious consequences of their introduce new principles of learning in terms part and parcel of a national programme to parents’ religious practices. It is now widely of which problems were solved through transform the education system to bring it accepted that in every matter concerning reason rather than force. In order to put the into line with the letter and spirit of the the child, the child’s best interests must be child at the centre of the school and to Constitution. The creation of uniform norms of paramount importance. protect the learner from physical and and standards for all schools, whether public Section 12 of the Constitution now emotional abuse, the legislature prescribed or independent, is crucial for educational adds to the rights protected by the interim a blanket ban on corporal punishment. ... development. A coherent and principled Constitution the following provisions: ... The ban was part of a comprehensive system of discipline is integral to such Everyone has the right ... to be free from all process of eliminating state-sanctioned use development. forms of violence ... It should be noted that of physical force as method of punishment. these rights to be violence-free are The outlawing of physical punishment in the constitutional duty to take steps to help The state is further under a additional to an not substitutes for the right school accordingly represented more than a diminish the amount of public and private not to be punished in a cruel, inhuman or pragmatic attempt to deal with disciplinary violence in society generally and to protect degrading way. Under section 7(2) the state problems in a new way. It had a principled all people and especially children from is obliged to ‘respect, protect and fulfil’ and symbolic function, manifestly intended maltreatment, abuse or degradation. More these rights. It must accordingly take to promote respect for the dignity and specifically, by ratifying the United Nations appropriate steps to reduce violence in physical and emotional integrity of all Convention on the Rights of the Child, it public and private life. Coupled with its children. 47 47 Constitutional Court of South Africa – Christian Education South Africa v. Minister of Education, Case CCT 4/00, judgment of 18 August 2000, full text available at http://www.concourt.gov.za. Right to Education Primers No. 3 37