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
Equal Education Seminar: Was SA sold out in 1994?
EE Seminar – “Was SA Sold Out in 1994? Economic Choices at the Transition?”
This Thursday Equal Education will be hosting a seminar about the nature of the economic transition in South Africa in the early 1990s. The topic is titled: “Was South Africa sold out in 1994? A public debate on the economic choices at the time of the transition.”
This was prompted by an article (“How the ANC’s Faustian pact sold out South Africa’s poorest“) written by Ronnie Kasrils in the Gaurdian in which he asserts that the ANC had, in the past, failed to make favourable decisions which would lead to more radical economic change in South Africa. He continues by stating that these decisions, in the transitory period of 1990, resulted in deepened inequality and poverty.
The panel includes Ronnie Kasrils (Former Minister of Intelligence and ANC NEC member), Rob Petersen (Adv of the High Court of South Africa) and Yoliswa Dwane (Chairperson of Equal Education). The session will be chaired by Fatima Hassan (Executive Director of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa).
Details:
Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, Humanities Graduate Building, University of Cape Town
Time: 17:30 – 19:30
