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
Zuma: 0 – NPA: 1
On the face of it this does not seem like a significant victory for the NPA in building a solid case against Mr Zuma because they already have a copy of the diary in dispute which was accepted as evidence in the Shaik trial. But maybe there are other documents among the one’s requested that we have not been told of and that will help the state.
In any case, it seems clear that Mr Zuma will be recharged by the NPA later this year and that he will therefore be a defendant in a criminal trial at the time of the ANC conference in Polokwane in December.
