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
Nadia Davids on coronavirus lockdown
You dream one night about walking maskless in the deep cool green of a forest, of inhaling the smell of pine, of damp rich soil and moss. When the lockdown eases and you’re allowed outside, you take your child to a public forest stream in an upscale neighbourhood with all this and more. There are tall oak trees with old knotted trunks, a field of bright, sun-dappled, dew-soaked grass. The world is more beautiful than you could have hoped or remembered. And then you see to your dismay that other people have had the same idea, that other people have wanted the outside, longed for this soft, damp green. You stare at them, willing them away. Your six year old turns to you, his new lessons learned and says, ‘There are too many people here. We should go home.’
