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
Ahmed Kathrada on racism
I refer to [an] incident, when years ago, together with some friends, I used a ‘Europeans only’ lift. A white woman, who also wanted to use the lift, told us to read the sign. We responded by saying that ‘we do not mind sharing a lift with Europeans’ and that she was welcome to join us’. Of course, she must have been horrified at the attitude of us ‘non-Europeans’ and chose not to take the lift. But, we asserted our dignity, and made our point.
