The right to vote in South Africa: a hundred years of experience

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Periodical article

Title:	The right to vote in South Africa: a hundred years of experience
Author:	Skovsholm, Klavs
Year:	1999
Periodical:	Verfassung und Recht in Übersee
Volume:	32
Issue:	2
Pages:	236-252
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	constitutions election law
Abstract:	The June 1999 elections under the Final Constitution of South Africa and the resignation of President Nelson Mandela are a historic first step and the culmination of a long and difficult process. The author focuses on the right to vote in South Africa under its five constitutions of 1909, 1961, 1983, 1993 (Interim) and 1996 (Final), placing special emphasis on the 1909, Interim and Final Constitutions. This type of historical approach puts two new constitutional principles in South Africa - the universal right to vote and the supremacy of the Constitution - into perspective. The universal right to vote was an impossibility until 1993 because of the apartheid ideology. The supremacy of the Constitution was nonexistent because of the British legal tradition of a sovereign Parliament. The author also considers related issues, such as the chapter on fundamental rights, the testing rights of the courts, and the rules regarding constitutional amendments in the Interim and the Final Constitution, as well as the protection of the right to vote on both a constitutional and a statutory level. App., notes, ref., sum. (p. 163).