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
At other channels, the prestigious news anchor position is generally filled by a journalist with substantial field experience. What ANN7 is proving daily is that there is a gaping chasm of difference between “being able to read” and “being able to read the news live on national TV”. No doubt the channel’s young women will improve with time, but at the moment their delivery is in some cases almost incomprehensible, as if they were reading a recipe in Klingon. Their weather girls may need additional tuition in geography; one gave the temperatures for both Polokwane and Pietersburg on Sunday. Another allegedly pointed firmly at Botswana while discussing Mpumalanga. Rebecca Davis of Daily Maverick on the launch of a new 24 hour news channel.
