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
[S]ince support for the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal is, in part, informed by the fact that, after Polokwane, the Zulu nationalist impulse was transferred from the IFP to the ANC, what will happen if a non-Zulu, such as Cyril Ramaphosa, is elected ANC president in 2017? Will the 2019 elections be the moment when the Zulu nationalist impulse shifts away from the ANC? This is the crux of the challenge that will face the ANC in the years and months leading up to its 2017 national conference. I was, therefore, not surprised to read in the Mail & Guardian on Friday that there is an ANC “caucus” in KwaZulu-Natal that does not want Ramaphosa to become the leader of the ANC. As they say in the province of my mother’s ancestors, “bafun’ ukumphuc’ isinkw’ emlonyeni” — they want to take bread out of Ramaphosa’s mouth just as he is about to swallow. There are two reasons worth highlighting about why this is happening so soon after Mangaung. First, it is about the consolidation of personal and political interests beyond the Zuma moment. Second, some members of the ANC are tribalists and some of these tribalists are in KwaZulu-Natal. – Aubrey Matshiqi in Business Day
