Rabia Mayet | rabiamayet@radioislam.co.za

30 April 2026

3-minute read

Lobby group Dignity SA has launched a landmark one-thousand-page constitutional challenge aiming to decriminalize assisted dying laws in SA, advocating to give terminally ill patients a choice to end their suffering.

Professor Willem Landman, chair of Dignity SA, notes that the key goal to this legal challenge is to relieve those “who have reached the end of the road” of “unbearable and intractable suffering” by granting them a medically assisted death. No matter how dire the circumstances a patient is in, under the current law, assisted dying is illegal.  Dignity SA is of the opinion that a small group of terminally ill patients die a very painful death, and this group ought to be “constitutionally supported” to die an easier and an earlier death.

While most of us are familiar with the term euthanasia, Prof Landman clarifies that this term became “contaminated” through its use in World War 2 when Nazi soldiers “euthanised” people. And while euthanasia is a means chosen by the patient’s family without his or her consent, assisted dying on the other hand is asked for by the patient once he or she has reached the end of the road.

There are a number of safeguards and eligibility criteria for patients voluntarily choosing assisted dying. They should be competent and able to give informed consent, have an irremediable and terminal condition, be experiencing unbearable and irreversible suffering, and have a person like a medical professional to apply the substance that will kill them. The patient should also ask for it repeatedly and his request must be recorded, with the opportunity to change his mind.

There is allowance in the law for patients to choose comfort or palliative care over treatment, and to manage their dying by refusing certain treatments or requesting them to be withdrawn. However, Prof Willem states that their submission of 11 case studies to the courts illustrates that there are a group of people for whom this does not work.

While Dignity SA has had some responses to their request to the courts, for which there is a standard timeline of approximately 30 days, Prof Willem says that they are unsure how long the entire procedure will take. “We cannot have a vacuum” on the matter, was his concluding remark.

Listen to the full interview with Ml Junaid Kharsany and Willem Landman here.