Civil and political rights
Civil rights include the ensuring of peoples' physical and mental integrity, life, and safety; protection from discrimination on grounds such as race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, color, age, political affiliation, ethnicity, religion, and disability; and individual rights such as privacy and the freedoms of thought, speech, religion, press, assembly, and movement.
South African constitutional litigation
The Bill of Rights is “the principal source of substantive constraints on public power in the Constitution.” The Bill of Rights instructs the state to use the power that the Constitution gives it in ways that do not violate fundamental rights and that promote and fulfil those rights. Should it fail to comply with these instructions, it will act unconstitutionally; its actions or laws will be unlawful and invalid. Although the Constitution as a whole is mostly concerned with state power and with law, there are a number of provisions of the Bill of Rights that place duties on private individuals in certain circumstances.