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
[S]ince support for the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal is, in part, informed by the fact that, after Polokwane, the Zulu nationalist impulse was transferred from the IFP to the ANC, what will happen if a non-Zulu, such as Cyril Ramaphosa, is elected ANC president in 2017? Will the 2019 elections be the moment when the Zulu nationalist impulse shifts away from the ANC? This is the crux of the challenge that will face the ANC in the years and months leading up to its 2017 national conference. I was, therefore, not surprised to read in the Mail & Guardian on Friday that there is an ANC “caucus” in KwaZulu-Natal that does not want Ramaphosa to become the leader of the ANC. As they say in the province of my mother’s ancestors, “bafun’ ukumphuc’ isinkw’ emlonyeni” — they want to take bread out of Ramaphosa’s mouth just as he is about to swallow. There are two reasons worth highlighting about why this is happening so soon after Mangaung. First, it is about the consolidation of personal and political interests beyond the Zuma moment. Second, some members of the ANC are tribalists and some of these tribalists are in KwaZulu-Natal. – Aubrey Matshiqi in Business Day
