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
Malema’s rights to freedom of movement and assembly have undoubtedly been infringed. The decision to charge him a week before the opening of ANC leadership nominations does not merely look like an example of selective prosecution, it appears to be a celebration of it. It seems to be a deliberate and shocking demonstration of the capacity of Zuma’s faction to institute — and also to suspend — police investigations and criminal prosecutions. Moyo’s conclusion is that there is “clearly more than enough on the horizon to warrant putting South Africa on a Sadc security watch list — without ruling out (later) placing the beleaguered country on the agenda of the (Sadc) Organ Troika”. – Anthony Butler in Business Day
