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
Malema is no innocent victim. But he has been punished for his role in expressing opinion, not in preventing others from having their say. He is punished for saying that Mbeki cares more about Africans than Zuma — not for storming a stage in 2010 to try to bully Justice Minister Jeff Radebe. He is sanctioned for remarks on Botswana that were crass and embarrassing but no threat to democracy in the ANC — not for driving his opponents out of a hall in Limpopo or ignoring a court order in the Eastern Cape. The message is clear: ANC members can bully and bend the rules, as long as they don’t criticise leaders or deviate from policy. This insistence that the problem is not unfair contest but contest itself will worsen the problem. – Steven Friedman in Business Day
