Alex Cockburn

A Company is a Company Because of Other People: Corporate Social Responsibility and the Constitution Alex Cockburn

Corporate social responsibility is a serious and pressing concern for all members of the new South Africa. Recent reports of fraud and corruption in the corporate sphere, coupled with ongoing environmental disturbances and labour disputes, have exposed the dangerous and potentially disastrous effects which can be triggered by corporate abuse. Serious attention and reform in this sphere are critical to the preservation and promotion of a harmonious future. South Africa needs to develop a legislative framework tailored specifically towards the governance of corporate social responsibility in order to ensure that corporate disasters can be foreseen and prevented well in advance of their occurrence, an occurrence that will impact negatively on the well-being of the economy as a whole as well as on the rights of individual citizens. Corporate social responsibility is not only a social imperative but also a constitutional mandate. Since the implementation of the Final Constitution in 1996, the South African Legislature has had a duty to bring the corporate sphere in line with the foundational principles of our new constitutional democracy, in particular with the Bill of Rights.