“Many of us have received a better set of cards and should leverage that privilege to help others,” she said, citing the examples of Charlotte Maxeke, Pixley ka Seme and Olive Schreiner. Madonsela also spoke about the importance of the concept of Ubuntu and how solidarity was central to this. Visit Daily Maverick’s home page for more news, analysis and investigations However, it had been while she was at the Department of Justice that she started working on issues of justice beyond the self and led the drafting of the Equality Act. Madonsela explained that there are various levels of justice and that it is okay to care about justice for the self first “because you can’t give what you don’t have”. “We cannot say that we’re moving forward as a nation while half the country is left behind,” said Nokeri, pointing to the crime rate which she said was informed by the country’s inequality. Read more in Daily Maverick: “ Human rights in South Africa – rhetoric vs reality ” Growing up, she had been quite aware that people were exposed to different opportunities and that it was important to acknowledge one’s privilege then seeing where you could step in and make a difference as opposed to leaving it to an external party to step in. Ndavi Nokeri – who is well known for saying: “I want every girl and woman to know they belong in any room” – told the audience that she understood the “we” in the Constitution to be about acknowledging the stories of individuals. “I used to wonder, why is my brother, who is in the same grade as me, able to come home, take off his school uniform and go play while I had to cook, clean and wash both our clothes.” She said that this was when her gender consciousness formed as she started to notice that in society women and girls seemed to bear the brunt of the work. Madonsela said that as long as there is injustice anywhere there can never be sustainable peace, and that she first started cultivating a sense of justice as a child and from a “selfish” standpoint when she saw the difference in treatment she received compared with her brother.
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