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
One of the key achievements of our Congress was precisely to single out in debates and resolutions the central threat to the unity and programme of our Alliance. In particular, our Congress singled out what we called “Kebble-ism” – namely, a dangerous axis between unscrupulous business people (black and white) on the one hand, and a bullying, chauvinistic populist tendency in parts of our movement on the other. Behind the headline stories of high-life parties and the flaunting of ill-gained wealth, lies the sordid reality of manipulative sponsorships, wheeling and dealing, organisational factionalism, arm-twisting and the general subversion of our democratic order. – South African Communist Party Statement issued after the first meeting of its Political Bureau for 2010.
