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
Sections 46(1)(d) and 105(1)(d) respectively provide that the National Assembly and Provincial Legislatures consist of women and men elected in terms of an electoral system that “results, in general, in proportional representation”. The respondents argued that this refers to an exclusive party proportional representation system. OUTA argued, correctly in my view, that proportionality does not equal exclusive party proportional representation. The idea of proportional representation is not inconsonant with independent candidate representation. These sections make no reference to party proportional representation, let alone exclusive party proportional representation. The focus of the sections is on the “result”: whoever the participants may be, the system must be one that “results, in general, in proportional representation”.
