Mr Zuma is no ordinary litigant. He is the former President of the Republic, who remains a public figure and continues to wield significant political influence, while acting as an example to his supporters… He has a great deal of power to incite others to similarly defy court orders because his actions and any consequences, or lack thereof, are being closely observed by the public. If his conduct is met with impunity, he will do significant damage to the rule of law. As this Court noted in Mamabolo, “[n]o one familiar with our history can be unaware of the very special need to preserve the integrity of the rule of law”. Mr Zuma is subject to the laws of the Republic. No person enjoys exclusion or exemption from the sovereignty of our laws… It would be antithetical to the value of accountability if those who once held high office are not bound by the law.
But let me acknowledge once more, loud and clear: I am an apartheid beneficiary. I am not proud of it. I am ashamed of the fact that gross human-rights violations were perpetrated in the name of my volk, that some of my fellow Afrikaners have shown absolutely no remorse, no humility with respect to the privileges they have enjoyed and still enjoy in post-apartheid South Africa. In Germany it is a crime to deny the Holocaust. Why should it be any different in South Africa for apartheid beneficiaries when they deny that they aided and abetted in the perpetration of and benefitted from a crime against humanity that remains as this untranslatable word, apartheid? – Jaco Barnard-Naude in a Blog post on Thought Leader
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