Human Rights in the Twenty First Century: Real Dichotomies, False Antagonisms

The minority, on the other hand, exercised all the power and enjoyed all the privileges of a dominant majority; their languages were the official ones, their cultures became the normal points of reference for the whole of society and physically they owned and occupied the central business districts, the comfortable suburbs and the developed farm lands. [...] Is the human rights idea, particularly when focused on the individual, a purely Western notion being imposed on the rest of the world? However much certain people in the West, the East and the South might believe it is, I think the answer must be that it is not. [...] THE RIGHT TO BE DIFFERENT A central conceptual problem we had to resolve in South Africa was the relationship between the right to be the same and the right to be different. [...] It then occurred to me that the right to be the same, in the first case, and the right to be different, in the second, were not opposed to each other. [...] On the contrary, the right to be the same in terms of fundamental civil, political, legal, economic and social rights, provided the foundation for the expression of difference through choice in the sphere of culture, lifestyle and personal priorities.