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
High Court on conflict of interest
We cannot agree with either the President’s submissions or those of Adv Abrahams. In a rights-based order it is fundamental that a conflicted person cannot act; to act despite a conflict is self-evidently to pervert the rights being exercised as well as the rights of those affected. And section 96(2)(b) [of the South African Constitution] makes that clear beyond the pale. If conflicted, the individual simply cannot act, is “unable” to act, whether section 90 was there or not.
