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 Menzi Simelani was appointed head of the NPA we labelled it “An Appalling Choice”. We said it was the stuff of which our worst nightmares are made. We said at the time, the real problem, among many others, was that Simelane had said he believed the NPA head must bow to executive authority, i.e. the president, when it comes to making decisions. On the contrary, the Constitution is explicit that the office of the NPA does not bow to anyone. It bows only to the “Constitution and the law”. But now we know that Simelane not only does not see South Africa’s ultimate law as necessarily binding. He is indeed now meddling in it. – Stephen Grootes at Daily Maverick
