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
Why courts decide
The abuse complained of in that case was that one of the accused persons had been incited by an informer and a customs officer to commit the offences in question and had lured him into the court’s jurisdiction. The court in Latif held that it was for a court to consider whether the abuse complained of was such as to justify a stay of proceedings. Mr Mpshe assigned to himself the role reserved for courts. If he had had proper regard to the decision in Latif, he would not have used it to justify the decision to discontinue the prosecution. Thus, he ignored relevant material such as the relevant dicta in Zuma, Latif and the appeal court judgment in HKSAR. The courts in the latter two cases were emphatic that allegations of abuse of process were within the remit of the trial court.
