Quote of the week
Universal adult suffrage on a common voters roll is one of the foundational values of our entire constitutional order. The achievement of the franchise has historically been important both for the acquisition of the rights of full and effective citizenship by all South Africans regardless of race, and for the accomplishment of an all-embracing nationhood. The universality of the franchise is important not only for nationhood and democracy. The vote of each and every citizen is a badge of dignity and of personhood. Quite literally, it says that everybody counts. In a country of great disparities of wealth and power it declares that whoever we are, whether rich or poor, exalted or disgraced, we all belong to the same democratic South African nation; that our destinies are intertwined in a single interactive polity.
August and Another v Electoral Commission and Others (CCT8/99) [1999] ZACC 3
“Sihamba noMsholozi, Sihamba noPresident (We are going with Msholozi, we are going with the president)”, Cosatu delegates sang on the closing day of their 11th national congress. The song indicated that the delegates supported Jacob Zuma’s (Msholozi is his clan name) bid for a second term as ANC leader at the ruling party’s national conference in Mangaung in December. Then, later on Thursday, they bestowed the “worst employer” award to Aurora Empowerment Systems, whose directors include Khulubuse Zuma, the president’s nephew, for breaking “every record in terms of dodging responsibility” and “starving workers”. It was one of many bizarre contractions of the four-day Cosatu congress, which the federation’s re-elected president Sdumo Dlamini opened on Monday. – Ranjeni Munusamy on Daily Maverick
