This special issue of the South African Journal on Human Rights comprises a selection of papers that were first presented at a colloquium in May 2017 entitled ‘Conquest, Constitutionalism and Democratic Contestations’. Both the colloquium and the articles in this special issue are animated by pressing political and intellectual contestations circulating in South African academic and public discourse relating to continuities and discontinuities between the colonial-apartheid past and the post-1994 constitutional present. Indeed, even the distinction between the ‘past’ and the ‘present’ in the South African context is an object of critical interrogation. Two decades since the enactment of the present constitution, problems of inequality, poverty, violence and social exclusion persist stubbornly along racial lines, and much of the optimism of the early 1990s concerning the promises of new legal and political order has dissipated. On a deeper level, this persistence suggests the continuity and durability of the political ontology, political economy and symbolic order created through colonial conquest and white supremacy. The durability and endurance of ‘past’ inequalities and injustices illustrate that the ‘new South Africa’ – lauded as a ‘miracle nation’ with the ‘best constitution in the world’ – can no longer be regarded as an unqualified success. A central theme in this special issue is to take seriously the moral, intellectual and political unravelling of post-1994 South African constitutionalism (as legal text and political culture) and to enquire whether it has been able to respond adequately to the fundamental contradictions generated by colonisation and apartheid. Whereas popular scholarly accounts associate the limitations of constitutional transformation with, among other sources, the lack of political will on the part of the ruling party, corruption and maladministration in government, the constraints of global capital and the vagaries of legal interpretation and adjudication, the starting point of this special issue is different. Authors were invited to consider how centring the historical problem of European domination and conquest in Africa – and South

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特刊介绍：征服、宪政与民主争论

本期《南非人权杂志》特刊收录了一系列论文，这些论文于 2017 年 5 月首次在题为“征服、宪政和民主争论”的座谈会上发表。本期特刊中的座谈会和文章都受到南非学术和公共话语中关于殖民种族隔离过去与 1994 年后宪法现在之间的连续性和不连续性的紧迫政治和知识争论的启发。事实上，即使是南非语境中“过去”和“现在”之间的区别也是批判性审问的对象。现行宪法颁布二十年以来，不平等、贫困、暴力和社会排斥问题在种族界线顽固地存在，1990 年代初期对新的法律和政治秩序的承诺的乐观情绪已经消散。在更深的层面上，这种坚持表明了通过殖民征服和白人至上创造的政治本体、政治经济和象征秩序的连续性和持久性。“过去”的不平等和不公正现象的持久性和持久性表明，“新南非”——被誉为拥有“世界上最好宪法”的“奇迹国家”——不能再被视为无条件的成功。本期特刊的一个中心主题是认真对待道德、1994 年后南非宪政（作为法律文本和政治文化）的思想和政治解体，并探究它是否能够充分应对殖民化和种族隔离所产生的基本矛盾。尽管流行的学术报告将宪法改革的局限性与执政党缺乏政治意愿、政府腐败和行政管理不善、全球资本的约束以及法律解释和裁决的变幻莫测等因素联系起来，但这个特刊的出发点是不同的。作者受邀考虑如何将欧洲统治和征服非洲和南部的历史问题置于中心 尽管流行的学术报告将宪法改革的局限性与执政党缺乏政治意愿、政府腐败和行政管理不善、全球资本的约束以及法律解释和裁决的变幻莫测等因素联系起来，但这个特刊的出发点是不同的。作者受邀考虑如何将欧洲统治和征服非洲和南部的历史问题置于中心 尽管流行的学术报告将宪法改革的局限性与执政党缺乏政治意愿、政府腐败和行政管理不善、全球资本的约束以及法律解释和裁决的变幻莫测等因素联系起来，但这个特刊的出发点是不同的。作者受邀考虑如何将欧洲统治和征服非洲和南部的历史问题置于中心