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
Captain Blackadder on Bush’s new plan for Iraq
GENERAL: Now, Field Marshal Hague has formulated a brilliant new tactical plan to ensure final victory in the field.
CAPTAIN BLACKADDER: Ah, would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of our trenches and walking very slowly towards the enemy, sir?
CAPTAIN DARLING: How could you possibly know that Blackadder, it’s classified information?
CAPTAIN BLACKADDER: It’s the same plan that we used last time, and the seventeen times before that.
GENERAL: Ex… ex… ex… actly! And that is what is so brilliant about it! It will catch the watchful Hun totally off guard. Doing precisely what we’ve done eighteen times before is exactly the last thing they’ll expect us to do this time!
There is, however, one small problem.
CAPTAIN BLACKADDER: That everyone always gets slaughtered in the first ten seconds?
GENERAL: That’s right. And Field Marshal Hague is worried that this may be depressing the men a tad. So, he’s looking to find a way to cheer them up.
CAPTAIN BLACKADDER: Well, his resignation and suicide would seem the obvious.
