impact on indigent debtors, and the existence of less restrictive means of execution.84 This approach to proportionality involves a baseline assessment of the gravity of certain laws and policies on the most vulnerable, including the most economically vulnerable. Secondly, in Khosa, the Constitutional Court applied proportionality analysis to the state’s positive obligations, finding the exclusion of permanent residents from the government’s social assistance scheme constituted unfair discrimination and an unreasonable and unjustifiable limitation of the right to have access to social security.85 In this case, proportionality analysis was triggered not by a negative obligation, but by the separate equality aspects of the claim. The exclusion was held to be both unfair discrimination (§ 9, unjustifiable under § 36) and an infringement of the requirement to take reasonable measures to progressively realize the right of access to social security (§27(2)). The Court left open the possibility that the inquiry into reasonableness under the two constitutional provisions could constitute separate tests. 86 Observers have hypothesized that there may be different kinds of justifications at stake between the reasonableness inquiry that is established for the positive obligations under economic and social rights, and the approach to reasonableness within the proportionality analysis of the general limitations clause: Whereas § 27(2) appears to limit our considerations to those justifications related to the means required to realize the purpose of the right (e.g., money) or the end 84 Jaftha v Schoeman 2005 (2) SA 140 (CC) at paras. 35–49. Compare §26(2); § 36. Khosa v. Minister of Social Development 2004 (6) SA 505 (CC). 86 Id. at para. 84. 85 18

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