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
When it comes to the charges [against Julius Malema] themselves, and the allegation of the abuse of state institutions to neutralise political enemies, the best I can offer is to remind the nation that absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence. What may become even more important to remember at some point in the evolution of the Malema saga is that, as we say in Xhosa, there are times when the victim (Malema or Zuma) is actually cut by his own knife. Furthermore, the best way of insulating oneself against the manipulation of investigative, prosecutorial and judicial processes is to avoid committing crime, especially if one is a protagonist in ANC internal battles. – Aubrey Matshiqi in his Business Day column
