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
Constitutional Court on African Women
African women under apartheid were systemically disenfranchised in a number of ways. It is important to recognise that the pervasive effects of patriarchy meant that women were often excluded even from seemingly gender-neutral spaces. The perception of women as the lesser gender was, and may still be, a widely-held societal view that meant that even where legislation did not demand the subjugation of women, the practices of officials and family members were still tainted by a bias towards men. The prioritisation of men is particularly prevalent in spheres of life that are seen as stereotypically masculine, such as labour, property, and legal affairs.
