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
On citizenship
The loss of citizenship – a fundamental right entrenched in s 20 of the Constitution – in these circumstances is arbitrary. Citizenship is an important right that brings with it many benefits. To deprive persons of this right, with no regard for their individual circumstances and the reasons that they are taking out another citizenship is both unfair and capricious. The legislature is not against dual citizenship we were told. If that is so, why take away South African citizenship by automatic operation of law, and require that its retention depends upon the invocation of a ministerial discretion that is entirely unspecified as to what its exercise is intended to achieve?
