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
“We have a problem… this organisation [the ANC] is faced with a new enemy… and this enemy is composed of twins. Twins that are destroying the organisation,” said President Jacob Zuma. To loud applause from members, he said there were people in the ANC who were prepared for the organisation to be destroyed in order for them to occupy certain positions. Lobbying within the ANC had in some cases stopped being comradely and was now deadly, marked by character assassination and gossip. “This enemy, the one twin — authority, positions. The [other] twin is money. These two walk together; they are well armed; they are destroying the African National Congress,” Zuma warned.
The two were related because “some are looking for a position to put their friends so that they have access to resources,” he said to cheers and whistles of approval from his audience. Zuma said there were people in the organisation “who have surrendered themselves to the comrades of other comrades… who work 24 hours for certain comrades, not for the ANC. – Cape Times Report on a speech delivered by Preisdent Jacob Zuma to the ANC Western cape provincial general council
