30 Judgment No. CCZ 2/18 Constitutional Application No. CCZ 86/15 purpose and not based on objective criteria would constitute a violation of the right to equal protection of the law. The court said at pp 1024G-1025B: “In regard to mere differentiation the constitutional State is expected to act in a rational manner. It should not regulate in an arbitrary manner or manifest ‘naked preferences’ that serve no legitimate governmental purpose, for that would be inconsistent with the rule of law and the fundamental premises of a constitutional State. The purpose of this aspect of equality is, therefore, to ensure that the State is bound to function in a rational manner …. Accordingly, before it can be said that mere differentiation infringes s 8 [IC] (now s 9(1) of the South African Constitution) it must be established that there is no rational relationship between the differentiation in question and the government purpose which is proffered to validate it. In the absence of such rational relationship the differentiation would infringe s 8.” From the case law and commentaries from other jurisdictions, it can be concluded that for justice to be done, classes may be created retrospectively by a law which appears to favour one class over another. The classification must have a rational relation to the purpose sought to be achieved by the legislation. The classification must be based on reasonable grounds that are related to the matters marking the differences in the circumstances of the people classified. In other words, when a law retrospectively creates a classification, its purpose must clearly and logically be beneficial. Good reason must exist for the instrumentality of the retrospective classification. Once classification is done for the legitimate purpose of legislation and is based on reasonable and objective criteria, the law cannot be said to violate one’s right to equal protection of the law. The transitional provision created two classes. The first class was that of employees whose contracts of employment were terminated on notice after the Zuva Petroleum judgment. They were to benefit from the payment of the minimum retrenchment packages under s 12 of the Act. The second class was that of the employers upon whom the obligation to pay the retrenchment packages to the employees whose contracts were terminated on notice was imposed.