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
Prince Andrew
The most riveting moment in the interview [with Prince Andrew] came at the very end. The Prince, finally acknowledging Epstein’s deeds, said, “Do I regret the fact that he has quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming? Yes.” Maitlis immediately dispensed with the inappropriate euphemism. “Unbecoming? He was a sex offender,” she replied, forcing the Prince to reckon with the brute fact. Being challenged: Prince Andrew must have found that experience unsettling and unfamiliar—even further from his rarefied experience than eating pizza, taking selfies, and recognizing the personal autonomy of members of the serving class, those people passing through whom one doesn’t need to notice.
