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.
[M]any ministers are chosen not for their potential performance but instead for their anticipated nonperformance. Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel is a gifted trade union fall-guy chosen to build a department that will never have a role. Energy Minister Dipuo Peters’s remit seems limited to craven capitulation before a rampaging Department of Minerals. The minister of injustice, Jeff Radebe, has apparently been selected for his inability to control the new director of national nonprosecutions. – Anthony Butler in Business Day
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