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
Government has the truth to communicate … the people who are going to pass on our content much more effectively to the public are the people we will focus on, I can tell you this right now… It will continue to work with mainstream media. Nothing is going to change, but you can expect – without a shadow of a doubt – that there will be more usage of media that covers areas which are generally not covered, [like] rural areas… Even if you write badly about government we will still do work with you, the criteria is not to write good about government. The criteria is to report on government work [and] once you’ve reported on government work, you can do what you like to criticise it. – Jimmy Manyi, announcing a new media strategy based on threats instead of persuasion
