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
In the MOU I signed on behalf of South Africa in 2007, nowhere appears a commitment to plan, to implement disarmament, demilitarisation and reintegration. They appear nowhere and in fact, minister, you yourself, in a reply to a question put to you in Parliament on February 10 2011, you told Parliament that South Africa’s involvement in the security of the CAR followed a request by President Francois Bozize to assist the CAR’s defence force to upgrade their military capabilities. You then said subsequent to that, that an MOU was signed, and then accepted by Cabinet on August 29 2008. The issue of planning and implementation of disarmament, demilitarisation and reintegration is nowhere in this memorandum. The first time I became aware of it is when the president announced this year in February that he had deployed 400 troops to the CAR for that purpose of planning and implementation of disarmament, demilitarisation and integration. What happened between 2007 and this time – there must have been a change in my view. There must have been something else negotiated to change the MOU I had signed in 2007 to bring in this question of demilitarisation.When did that change happen? – Cope MP Mosiuoa Lekota on the CAR fiasco
