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
Liberalism in general and its different South African shades has only been consistent on one and only one thing, political hypocrisy. Otherwise how does explain the fact that the DA has come out with guns blazing against e-tolling in Gauteng (which the SACP incidentally also has problems with) whilst at the same time imposing its own toll gates on Chapman`s peak in Cape Town. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the media completely ignored the SACP Central Committee statement over the weekend when it pointed this out, since, for all intents and purposes, mainstream and commercial media in South Africa, with few exceptions, has become the mouthpiece of especially post 1994 (white) liberalism. – Blade Nzimande
