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
In the MOU I signed on behalf of South Africa in 2007, nowhere appears a commitment to plan, to implement disarmament, demilitarisation and reintegration. They appear nowhere and in fact, minister, you yourself, in a reply to a question put to you in Parliament on February 10 2011, you told Parliament that South Africa’s involvement in the security of the CAR followed a request by President Francois Bozize to assist the CAR’s defence force to upgrade their military capabilities. You then said subsequent to that, that an MOU was signed, and then accepted by Cabinet on August 29 2008. The issue of planning and implementation of disarmament, demilitarisation and reintegration is nowhere in this memorandum. The first time I became aware of it is when the president announced this year in February that he had deployed 400 troops to the CAR for that purpose of planning and implementation of disarmament, demilitarisation and integration. What happened between 2007 and this time – there must have been a change in my view. There must have been something else negotiated to change the MOU I had signed in 2007 to bring in this question of demilitarisation.When did that change happen? – Cope MP Mosiuoa Lekota on the CAR fiasco
