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
What happens if vote of no confidence is defeated.
[What happens if the ANC wins the vote of no confidence against President Jacob Zuma] by a substantial majority, with only a handful of ANC MPs voting with the opposition. Supposedly this would be a massive victory for the ruling party, yet it will fly in the face of not just the parliamentary opposition, but a massive body of popular opinion throughout the country. The ANC would have voted to keep a deeply corrupt president in power, with probable long term disastrous electoral consequences. Any internal ANC “reform” project will be more likely to fail.
