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.
Barely had parliament said no to everything [on Brexit] last night than Mark was barrelling toward the TV cameras to give us his Mark Francois once more. His bumptiousness is now so pronounced that it has passed into the clinical realm, and comes across as a kind of exhibitionism. He is compelled to reveal his stupidity to a camera. Mark Francois is the Westminster equivalent of one of those zoo chimps, probably driven mad by confinement, who furiously masturbate in front of tourists.
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