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.

Justice Albie Sachs
August and Another v Electoral Commission and Others (CCT8/99) [1999] ZACC 3
1 March 2016

A state of emergency in France erodes liberty

So not only is the present state of emergency [in France] in the process of being legitimised by the constitution, but a substantial part of what it allows is being written into legislation so that it can apply in normal as well as extraordinary circumstances. The terrorist attacks, it seems, have served as a pretext to expand the lawful extent of the use of state force. There has been virtually no protest (it helps that demonstrations are banned).

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