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
Very serious, however, is the respondents’ dishonest conduct of the proceedings. Instead of dealing with the issues they launched an unbridled attack on the appellant. It has become a common occurrence for persons accused of a wrongdoing, instead of confronting the allegation, to accuse the accuser and seek to break down the institution involved. This judgment must serve as a warning to legal practitioners that courts cannot countenance this strategy. In itself it is unprofessional. The problem is that the respondents’ professional body appears to have instigated their behaviour and aided and abetted them in making untruthful denials, ignoring laws and court judgments, and launching an attack on the appellant. Had it not been for the invidious role of their society I would have had little hesitation to find that the respondents were not fit to continue practising. – SCA in Law Society of the Northern Provinces v Mogami ZASCA 107 (588/08) [2009]
