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How I got roped into hacking the Constitution

When I arrived at Tshimologong Precinct in Braamfontein for Hacks/Hackers #HackTheConstitution event, I expected to be covering it for htxt.africa.

What I didn’t expect – and what in the event happened – was to be part of the group’s effort. My protests were quickly dismissed by event organiser Debbi Schultz and I found myself at a table with coder Christo Rademan and user experience designer Martin Mashatola. The three of us were part of a group that included lawyers, artists, coders, developers and other journalists tasked with hacking South Africa’s constitution.

No, it didn’t involve a DDoS attack on Parliament’s website. Let me explain.

The South African Constitution is one of the most liberal and forward-thinking documents in existence. This is due in part that it was created shortly after the end of apartheid and one of its core purposes was to ensure that no regime so oppressive could rise in the country again.

Hack The Constitution
Event co-host Debbi Schultz at work.

To that end, the human rights of every South African are enshrined in law. As ConCourt clerk Sanan Mirzoyev put it, the South African Constitution “is the script that defines [local] law.”

The main problem is that not many South Africa have read and absorbed this lengthy document, which seems counter intuitive given how often it’s cited by politicians, human rights advocates and pundits in the daily news cycle. South Africans may be aware that the Constitution is important, but very few are familiar with it.

“After President Jacob Zuma came out of the Nkandla court case that made it to the Constitution Court, he said that he didn’t understand the Constitution and that he had been given the wrong advice,” says designer Thati Mokgoro.

“If the President doesn’t understand the Constitution then can you imagine how many people don’t. For a lay person, the Constitution is pretty inaccessible,” he says. “But what if you prepared something that people could easily understand? What if you did it in a way that excited them? Get them to be so excited they would want to share it with their friends. Ten years ago, this would be impossible.”

As part of the Fakugesi Tech Festival, Hacks/Hackers – an entirely volunteer organisation of developers and journalists – had a stab at accomplishing this. Around 18 of us were split off into three groups to brainstorm how to make a 180-page document packed with legal jargon accessible to anyone. No pressure.

Hack The Constitution
Ideation in action.

The notion of hacking South Africa’s Constitution, incidentally, didn’t just come about for Fakugesi. Rather the day’s worth of hacking was the culmination of six months of back and forth between the various parties.

Everyone involved believed that an approachable, easy-to-use path in the country’s constitution was necessary, but finding time to tackle this rather difficult task was problematic. Fakugesi provided the opportunity to pool resources for several hours at a time – and finally, the group could start producing some results.

It was too much to hope that the group would have a working prototype by the end of the day; indeed, the project could take years to complete.

But the day allowed for some decent framework to be built –  and also rammed home exactly how limited our resources and time were. My idea to present the Constitution as an explorative MMO/social network experience wasn’t dismissed outright, but it was pretty obvious that we just didn’t have the budget or time to implement it. So much for my big thinking.

Hack-the-con2

An app was also out of the question, given the frequency with which developers would need to patch and update it on multiple platforms. Once again, time and resources weren’t enough.

Instead what the group settled on website emphasising an easy-to-use interface that revealed the Bill Of Rights and the Constitution as a story of sorts, breaking the text into plain English and placing it squarely in its historical context.

That, at any rate, was how the day ended, but the creative types, hacks like me and lawyers have our work cut out for us. As we went our separate ways from Tshimologong Precinct, the volume of work ahead of us looks like it may stretch quite far into the future.

This is why we’re putting the call out to our readers. Whether you’re an artist, lawyer, journalist or developer we’d love for you to get involved. Hacking the Constitution could help millions of South Africans and its a project we’re proud to be a part of. How about you?

Want to get involved with #HackTheConstitition? Keep an eye on hacktheconstitution.org.za and Hacks/Hackers’ Meetup group.

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