Judgment No. CCZ 3/14 9 Const. Application No. CCZ 64/13 to vote? For then that would be absurd viewed from the context of the unqualified right to vote conferred upon such persons by the Constitution. The right to vote is absolute. No derogation therefrom is provided for by the Constitution. The Court must proceed from the premise that Parliament intended to act constitutionally and, in casu, to respect the sacred right of the special voters to vote. It therefore could not have intended to deprive special voters of their right to vote should the necessary measures not be put in place by the State to enable them to cast their special votes on the dates prescribed. Another rule of construction, the mischief rule, can be called in aid at this juncture. In order to assist the court in deciding on the true intention of the legislature, the Court may have regard to ‘the mischief’ that the Act was designed to remedy. Thus the Court may look not only at the language of the statute, but also at the surrounding circumstances, and may consider its objects, its mischiefs, and its consequences 3. In this regard, in S v Meredith 1981(3) SA 29 (ZAD) at 33, BARON JA had this to say: “It is trite that words and phrases cannot be construed in vacuo; their meaning can be discerned only in the context in which they are used. I think it is worth citing the words of Viscount SIMONDS in Attorney-General v HRH Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover (1957) 1 All ER 49 at 53: “For words, and particularly general words, cannot be read in isolation; their colour and content are derived from their context. So it is that I conceive it to be my right and duty to examine every word of a statute in its context, and I use context in its widest sense which I have already indicated as including not only other enacting provisions of the same statute, but its preamble, the existing state of the law, other statutes in pari materia, and the mischief which I can, by those and other legitimate means, discern that the statute was intended to remedy.”4 3 4 Cockram supra at p48 Cockram supra at p49