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.
Readers of this Blog have been arguing about being an “African” and referred to President Thabo Mbeki’s very famous and moving speech he made in the late 1990’s called “I am an African”. I post it here also for those who yearn for the days when we could all be so proud of our President, before HIV/AIDS, “no crisis” Zimbabwe, the “ultra left”, Vusi Pikoli and Jackie Selebi, sullied his reputation. Those were the days when our President gave me tears in my eyes for all the right reasons.
BACK TO TOP