All because Gwebecimele and Mdu dared to share their thoughts.

I thought Pierre’s response was rather nifty.

It’s nevertheless drawn some interesting comments.

Chris McDaniel says: September 10, 2009 at 11:18 am – “You however do not have that pleasure unless you open up your own blog and talk about the issues you have raised”.

Nobody owns cyberspace – Pierre probably has administrator privileges so he can turn off/remove/delete comments anytime he wants – that’s as far as his powers will allow him.

It’s wrong to stop people from commenting just cos we don’t like/approve/agree (the exception to that rule was the Minister in the Office of the President in a bygone era).

Sarah Palin says: September 10, 2009 at 11:24 am – “He has set up this blog to discuss issues ‘mostly from the perspective of Constitutional Law’”.

Neatly massaged to make your point “It deals with social and political aspects of South African society – mostly from a constitutional perspective.”

Now where else was the second part dependent on the first part to produce a neutralised outcome?

Michael Osborne says: September 11, 2009 at 9:47 am.

Well said – that about sums it up!

I deduce you are of the thinking that “we should live in this world but not be part of it”?

But you know it isn’t as simple as that. And for a long time now certain parts of society wish to remove the aspect of God from all influence – in fact adopting Utilitarian ideology to justify their moral and ethical standards, which is very low.

Soon the day is coming when even ….

May God protect our people.
Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso.
God seën Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa.
Mudzimu fhatutshedza Afurika. Hosi katekisa Afrika

will be amended or removed.

The more a certain minority continue to deny fault in their subjective racism, the more the latter problem will grow and evolve into a extreme form of Black Nationalism which you are obviously seeing these days to be taking shape in our society.

I have mentioned before the tell-tale signs of the bastardization of some English words which is an effort to undermine the other and almost enforce confrontations when pointed out as being incorrect. Other signs are the increased use of it in political battles you mentioned before and bombard the minority with accusations of racism, which is becoming justified more and more.

We face two immense problems. One is that, as you suggest, there is a very human tendency to deny fault, Coming to terms with one’s own subjective racism demands more maturity than most people have.

Another problem is that the whole discourse of racism has been trivialised and bastardised by its indiscriminate use in political battles. When Mbeki says that attacks on corruption manifests racism, when Malema claims the treatment of Caster Semenya by the IAAF is also a form of racism, anti-racism as a project threatens to collapse entirely.

I guess no-one wishes to comment on the scenario I gave. Many have raised the calls of identifying racism and proof there of, but the point that Mdu and Co. have struggled to illustrate is that this system has taken itself underground but still immensely prevalent. It hides itself with coded language – for example when communicating referring to blacks as tires, nuggets, kiwis and countless others to put anyone in earshot off the trial of suspecting the existence of racism in the realm they might find themselves, that being black of course. the burst in social networking mediums allow for more private and confidential discussions which insure the maintaining of the status quo of thinking and rallying others to join.

So when some challenge mdu and Co. to change their attitudes I suggest looking inwards first and finding the disgusting bigot there.

That is, I do not see how you can claim to see nothing objectionable about promoting the rule of law on the one hand, but condemn the efforts to pursue proceedings against them on the other. Both efforts are, at the core of it, about holding the decision makers to the rule of law. So if you cannot cogently dispute the view that the applications are legally sound, then you tend heavily towards advocating the condonation of apparently unlawful decisions.

I think that both proceedings are of crucial import. This is such an important time for our constitutional democracy. Our commitment to the rule of law is being tested.

And let me make this very clear: I do not mean to insult or antagonise you. I hope you can accept that. But I do want to make myself clear. It seems you do not fully understand why the Mpshe and JSC majority decisions represent such a threat. And insofar as you fail to take issue with efforts to challenge those decisions on legal grounds, you implicitly endorse the taking of unlawful decisions and thus the view that at least some public bodies are beyond fair reproach. In short, and with great respect, your views here are a big part of a grave problem.

Let is learn the lessons of history and move on — in a spirit on Ubuntu. A house divided itself cannot stand. The crude positivism imposed by colonialism insists on a mythical “objectivity.” The “rule of law” pretends that legal discourse can autonomous and non-political. These are abstractions far removed from the reality in which most South Africans live.

I say that if a prosecution becomes too controversial, it must be dropped. It is ridiculous to say that the same standard of criminal justice applies to distinguished heroes of the struggle as to an impoverished woman caught shoplifting at Checkers.

These are different classes of people. You cannot put them in the same basket. (As Aristotle says: Justice means treating like cases alike; and different cases differently.)