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
On Warlords and democrats
When Graham Brady, the Conservative Party’s
Of course, Mr Brady did not resign from the UK Parliament – merely from the front benches of Parliament. The MP’s for Khutsong would have had to resign as cabinet Minister or Chief Whip to have acted in a comparably manner than Mr. Brady.
Nevertheless, the implicit question remains: why do South African politicians never resign any position of power as a matter of principle. Why did no ANC cabinet ministers resign, for example, about the HIV/AIDS fiasco six years ago or when Jacob Zuma was fired or when
There are several answers to this question. One is that our MP’s are so wedded to their political parties that they would never speak against their own – a bit of the Hansie Cronje syndrome.
A second reason is that MPs are not directly elected in constituencies and are therefore beholden to party bosses. If they resign in a fuss from cabinet, they will soon be kicked out of the National Assembly as well. Before they know it they will be redeployed as
Having a constituency system also has other advantages. MPs who actually serve a constituency, must try and please their constituents and will therefore generally be far more responsive to the needs of the electorate than MPs selected by party bosses. Given this obvious advantage, one has to ask: Why is it that the ANC does not want to bring back some form of the constituency system?
The traditional argument is that the party bosses (i.e. Thabo Mbeki and Co) do not want to lose their power over the MPs. If one has a list system of proportional representation, the party and not the electorate decides who becomes MPs.
But recently some ANC people whispered into my ear that there is another reason for sticking to the list system. There is a real fear, according to my source, that independent constituency MPs will become a force onto themselves and would act like Warlords. This would then eventually destroy the ANC.
According to this view, all that holds the various factions of the ANC together and the only moderating force on the ANC is the Central Party structures. If one devolved matters to individual constituencies, demagogues and anti-democratic forces will take over. Without the instructions from head quarters, there would be no more gay rights and no more capitalism. And there would be far more renaming upheavals and other forms of populist politics. Think an ANC version of George Galloway!
These musings prompted another friend to ask: But what happens when the Warlords take over head office? My answer: we will have to wait until December to see!
