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Supreme Court, Trans Amendment Act and a Foucauldian lesson: A weekly round-up on Constitution First

Biopower, as Michel Foucault explained, is the technology by which the modern State ceased merely punishing bodies and began administering them. Some lives were deemed productive, legible, worth investing in, while others were, in his phrase, let die, through the quieter violence of exclusion, exposure and abandonment. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, which became a law in March, is a near-perfect illustration of this logic in motion.