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.
According to the newspaper internal documents of Thyssen Krupp – a German company that supplied South Africa with war corvette ships – has revealed that Shaik had requested the bribe in 1998.
Questions about the arms deal just does not seem to want to go away. When the history of the rise and fall of the ANC is written, the arms deal will warrant more than a footnote….
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