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
Quicker, cheaper divorce coming
Is the legislature expecting a new spike in divorces now that they have legalised same-sex marriage? From anecdotal evidence it seems that same sex couples are not rushing to the magistrates offices across South Africa to get married so even the most homophobc person could not argue that there will be a flood of new divorce cases.
This means that the propose legislation suggests that in a moment of sanity the higher ups at the Department of Justice or Home Affiars have realised how silly it is to try and limit divorce by making the process expensive and cumbersome.
Whether the advocate’s profession is going to be thrilled by this move is, of course, another matter.
