Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
When it comes to the charges [against Julius Malema] themselves, and the allegation of the abuse of state institutions to neutralise political enemies, the best I can offer is to remind the nation that absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence. What may become even more important to remember at some point in the evolution of the Malema saga is that, as we say in Xhosa, there are times when the victim (Malema or Zuma) is actually cut by his own knife. Furthermore, the best way of insulating oneself against the manipulation of investigative, prosecutorial and judicial processes is to avoid committing crime, especially if one is a protagonist in ANC internal battles. – Aubrey Matshiqi in his Business Day column
