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
On State Capture
On the face of it, the Bosasa story sounds all too familiar – except this time, it is not three brothers from India who found themselves friends to a president, but rather an Eastern Cape businessman with struggle credentials and cronies with no qualms. His name is Gavin Watson. Watson has close links to the ANC thanks to struggle credentials that involved the Watson brothers refusing to play for all white rugby teams pre-1994. Watson was not alone. His right hand man for 17 years was Angelo Agrizzi, a boisterous, flashy Italian with a penchant for fast Ferraris. A host of other executives, each with their own connections to the political realm joined along the way, opening more doors. Now Agrizzi is pulling the plug. He is finally going to speak out about his years at Bosasa – the millions allegedly paid in bribes, the covert operations to destroy evidence to keep government investigators in the dark and how a Krugersdorp company that started out providing catering at mine hostels became a billion rand tender machine.
