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
Curiouser and curiouser
The story of the ANC and the hoax emails just get curiouser and curiouser. According to the Mail & Guardian the ANC task team asked to investigate the matter, found that the emails were genuine in the sense that they “existed in cyberspace” – they were written and sent by individuals – and were not fabricated by NIA officials.
Now former National Intelligence Agency boss Billy Masetlha has subpoenaed ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe to hand over the ruling party’s “hoax” email report.
Masetlha’s motive in summonsing Motlanthe is straightforward: he is accused of being central to the fabrication of the emails, while the report finds that other, as yet unnamed, actors are responsible. If the document goes public, the authenticity of the messages would have to be further investigated.
What I do not understand is how anyone in his or her right mind could ever have thought that the content of the emails were genuine. When the Mail & Guardian published extracts from the emails, it became clear that they were obviously false. Yet people like Kgalema Motlanthe actually seem to have believed in their authenticity.
It seems to suggest that the ANC is so riddled with infighting and some of its leaders so paranoid that they would believe in the authenticity of such crude fabrications. It is embarrassing that Motlanthe, whose name is mentioned as a compromise candidate for the ANC Presidency, could have fallen for them.
Or was he set up by pro-Mbeki people to discredit him and eliminate him from the racefor the President of the ANC? Maybe he was handed the emails and someone very influential and important whispered in his ear that the emails were genuine exactly to set him up. But even if that is the case, the fact that he could have beleived in the authenticity of the emails probably makes him too paranoid and/or stupid to become President of South Africa.
