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
Why the Rule of Law is not only important for the rich
Justice Johan Kriegler has been vilified by some because his organisation, Freedom Under Law (FUL), decided to challenge the decision of the Judicial Services Commission not to investigate the charges against Judge President John Hlophe. Kriegler argued that it was necessary to take this action in order to defend the Rule of Law. If even a small bit of what is shown on the video below and alleged elsewhere by Abahlali baseMjondolo is true, it conclusively demonstrates why the defense of the Rule of Law is not a frolic to protect the rich and well heeled alone.
If members of the police take sides in local conflicts and if local politicians do not respect the law because they think that state institutions will not respect the law and will turn a blind eye to their lawlessness and criminality, social activism and political mobilisation – both essential for the thriving of democracy – will be snuffed out and our beautiful Constitution will not be worth the paper it is written on. Anyone who dares to oppose the whims of local power brokers and charlatans acting under the protection of local politicians will face the threat of violence or even death.
This is slightly more important, I suspect, than whether John Hlophe is a crook or whether the members of the JSC are unprincipled political hacks doing the bidding of the ANC. Watch this video and weep.
