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
The courts can help to safeguard democracy. But if they are used to impose on the racial majority the will of a minority, majority politicians will resist and the independence of the courts will be destroyed. All of which explains why the court actions against the singing of a struggle song by African National Congress (ANC) Youth League leader Julius Malema are bad for democracy, the constitution — and minorities themselves. One reason why it is bad for democracy is that it may have enabled Malema to escape accounting to society. Those who tell him what to do knew a diversion was needed to draw attention away from his personal finances. The claim that the Pan Africanist Congress did not organise Sharpeville did not have the desired effect of rallying the ANC behind him and the song was no doubt seen — accurately — to be a more effective method. – Steven Friedman in Business Day
