Religious language entered the 1996 South African constitution

Evidence

Under its lingering influence, the language of God crept back – in a prefatory and suggestive rather than substantive way, to be sure – into the new Constitution of 1996. “May God protect our people,” echoing the new national anthem “Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika” (“God bless Africa”), closes the Preamble to what by all accounts is the world’s most liberal democratic Constitution today, the more notably so given the ANC’s studiedly secularized Constitutions of the previous half-century. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1569

Categorization

• QUESTION: What explains the global exception — the world’s most liberal constitution invoking God? Worth chasing the drafting debates.
• XREF: Echoes the puzzle in The Threat of Race’s broader theme of how secular liberal documents absorb religious legitimation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1569