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
On the Presidents Keepers
The revelations in Pauw’s book [All the President’s Keepers: Those keeping Zuma out of prison and in power] have already made the rounds, in particular allegations of President Zuma’s refusal to file tax returns; and that he was paid a million rand a month for a shadow job during his first months in office. The 140 dud cheques Zuma supposedly wrote, the shipments of cash from a Russian mining company, and the need constantly to siphon money from benefactors, including Nelson Mandela, round out a portrait, by Pauw, of a dark parasite.
