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
Police brutality during lockdown
Tyrone Moeng was only 19 when he became the fifth person to be killed by the police during the Covid-19 lockdown. Moeng’s death did not make the news and his name has been unknown until now. He was only referred to in an Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) presentation to Parliament as “CAS 40/04/2020”. On the night of 13 April, the Northern Cape teenager was asleep with a friend in his shack in Sternham about 2km from Groblershoop. Police officers banged on the door. He pushed out a side panel of the shack and ran away but the Police shot him as he fled and he died from his wounds.
