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Serious efforts to legally recognise and protect human rights in Africa came only \nwith the constitutional reforms that started in the 1990s.Many of the resulting new \nor revised constitutions now contain provisions aimed at promoting democratic \ngovernance, constitutionalism, and respect for the rule of law and human rights. \nAlthough many recent studies and surveys show that there have been significant \nimprovements in the quantum of human rights protection in Africa in the last \ntwo decades, not much of this research has looked at the specific issue of the \nright to social security. The aim of this paper is therefore to provide an overview \nof the position of the right to social security in African constitutions with special \nreference to the South African constitution and to see what impact this may have in \npromoting human rights protection. Although this is not generally acknowledged, \nthe right to social security is a human right that is of as much social, economic \nand political importance as any of the other types of human rights.The paper will start by briefly looking at the conceptual and contextual \nframework of the right to social security in Africa. This section will examine \nthe basic concept and definition of social security and consider why it is such \nan important issue in Africa today. The next section will provide an overview of \nthe constitutional framework for recognising and protecting the right to social \nsecurity in selected African constitutions. From this overview, it will be seen \nthat South Africa has one of the most constitutionally entrenched frameworks \nfor protecting the right of access to social security on the continent. The main \nlessons from the South African experience will therefore be considered. This will \nbe followed by a consideration of what the prospects for advancing the right \nof access to social security rights in Africa are. By way of conclusion, it will \nbe contended that constitutionalism, democracy, good governance and a strong ethos for human rights recognition and protection will not easily take root until \nsome of the problems of poverty, deprivation and marginalisation are tackled, \nideally through a strong, legally enforceable commitment to social security rights \nexpressly recognised and protected in the constitution.
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