Golly, what a rotten lot we expatriate South Africans are.

Ever since the Pretoria high court ruled that expatriate South Africans should have the right to vote, and that the limitations set up by current statute are incorrect, there has been an extraordinary outpouring of emotion against those of us who continue to hold the passport but live outside the country.

It may be politically awkward for those of us who are not diehard racists that the court action has been driven in part by a party associated with old white right-wing politics, but it is a constitutional principle that is at issue, not whether those of us disenfranchised by a law that is simply wrong should be subject to some of the bizarre qualifications that have suggested in various comments on the internet.

Now, let us get some things straight. All South African expatriates are white. We all deeply resent the post-1994 democracy, and tell everyone who would care to listen that the country has gone to the dogs. We are all, it goes without saying, Democratic Alliance voters, with a handful of exceptions who read internet news sites and have opted for COPE. The only awkward tug when we left was when we towed our swimming pools with us. We are all wealthy, which is convenient enough given how much money we have to spend on prescription heavy-duty tranquilisers when those cravings for biltong, Appletiser and Mrs Ball’s Chutney strike. In short, we match every stereotype. It is that simple.

That would explain why some posters on the internet have suggested, among other things, that only those who pay tax in South Africa should be allowed to vote (presumably willing to disenfranchise any number of people either unemployed or who have earnings below the minimum tax threshold), and only those who continue to own property in South Africa (which clears a few million off the voters’ roll as well).

Good Lord, has someone been digging up ancient election manifestos from the United Party et al, or dusted off old colonial statutes about property qualifications before admission to the franchise?

Now, one could advance a few arguments about the norms about expatriates voting, such as the fact that it is common practice in many democracies. One could get defensive and point out that some South African expatriates wholeheartedly embrace the concept of our post-1994 democracy (of which, it is clear, there is no unanimous vision, but that is part of being a democracy) and live outside the country for a number of reasons, including the opportunities afforded by higher salaries elsewhere in the global marketplace, that there are South Africans working in NGOs and in development and so passing on some of the lessons learnt in our experience and other, more personal reasons, such as the fact in my case my spouse and I chose to live in her country of birth, not mine, and it was no simple decision. One might as well throw in that in the case of expatriates from various countries around the world, they might not pay income or other formal forms of tax, but they do contribute to the economy by repatriating wealth.

One may chuck in that there are people like myself who creak on to anyone who will care to listen that they should buy air tickets and visit South Africa as tourists, and reject the generalisation that a tourist visa to South Africa is a DIY death warrant. (Ah, hectoring people to spend their euro in South Africa, that’s motivated by our guilt, isn’t it? If that’s your view, please scan in and e-mail me a copy of your doctorate in psychology.)

Yes, there are the variety who pour vitriol on South Africa as it is now. Where I live, there are very few South Africans and if I encounter one of the Dismal Jimmy variety, an experience that in the past more than seven years happily has been very rare, I simply avoid them. I heard enough from dreary racists in the close to 40 years that I lived there.

I have read about the complaint that allowing expatriate South Africans to vote will be expensive and complex to organise. Well, so is having 11 official languages, continuing to have two capital cities, and paying traditional leaders with taxpayers’ money, along with coughing up the salaries for all those employed by the Chapter 9 State Institutions Supporting Democracy. All of these are expenses that flow from the provisions of the same constitution approved by the constitutional assembly in 1996 and so heartily applauded at the time, on the same day that Thabo Mbeki made his deeply moving "I am an African" speech.

A lot of effort went into this constitution. It would be a good idea to apply all of its principles universally, rather than cherry-picking those that may be politically convenient in the moment of any given day. If there are rights that now seem less attractive than they did in 1996, let’s excise them and save some money on the number of pages in the next edition.

Speaking of that constitution, a copy of which was among those things I was sure to pack when I moved (Sorry, I didn’t pack a Springbok rugby jersey, because rugby and sport in general are, and always have been, of utter disinterest to me – no wonder people would think I am not a genuine South African) let us dip into it for a few choice paragraphs.

Without telling the constitutional court its business, I would direct them to just a few relevant clauses, which are written down in the plain language in which the drafters of our constitution were so careful to express themselves.

Chapter 1, under "Citizenship": (2): "All citizens are equally entitled to the rights, privileges and benefits of citizenship".

Chapter 2, under "Political Rights": 19. (3): "Every adult citizen has the right (a) to vote in elections for any legislative body established in terms of the constitution, and to do so in secret".

Chapter 2, under "Citizenship": "No citizen may be deprived of citizenship".

Now, I know that it is better not to anticipate the outcome of a court case or to tell judges what to do, but I would imagine that when the case reaches the constitutional court which, reportedly, it will do so on March 4, the honorable judges can keep space free for a long lunch and a leisurely afternoon. These quotations from my pocket edition of the constitution came from the first nine pages.

February 14 will see a very happy Valentine’s Day for my family and me, as has been the case every one of the years we have been together. It would be wrong to generalise about all expatriate South Africans, but this one at least is not asking for the right to vote as an act of love, because it is not the love of my compatriots that I am demanding; on the same principle that expatriates should not be lumped together to be regarded with hatred, resentment or as stereotypes.

And should the court find, as I believe it should, that I am entitled to stroll to our embassy and vote, for whom would I be voting? See above, among those constitutional rights – it is no one’s business to know.


* Useful sites to watch the outcome of this story: iol.co.za, mg.co.za and news24.com