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.

Justice Albie Sachs
August and Another v Electoral Commission and Others (CCT8/99) [1999] ZACC 3
30 March 2007

Are law lecturers thin skinned?

I see that the claim for damages by Mervyn Dendy, who used to be an Associate Professor at Wits Law School, was rejected by the Supreme Court of Appeal. Dendy had applied for promotion to full Professor with some other of his colleagues and was rather aggrieved at not being successful. The SCA upheld exceptions to the claims made by him on the ground that a reasonable person would not have felt humiliated and insulted in the circumstances.

I suspect the claim had more to do with the politics of affirmative action than with a person feeling personally slighted, but I do not know Mr Dendy, so can’t say for sure.

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