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
In the last year and especially the last few weeks, following the speeches of President Jacob Zuma and Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi, state-supported AIDS denialism has been destroyed. If [Rian] Malan had any shame, he would have stayed out of the public light after supporting an ideology responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. But he is shameless and his denialist scribblings have continued. – Nathan Geffen from the Treatment Action Campaign
