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
Meanwhile, Van Schalkwyk plans to extend the Sho’t Left campaign and encourage supply-side diversification. Now rumours are circulating that he has identified four niche opportunities for heritage product development. The first involves an expansion of cultural tourism. The present bias in favour of “African cultural villages” in rural areas has been revisited. The Sho’t Left campaign will instead showcase a “Red October Show” in which bare-breasted popular icons Steve Hofmeyr and Dan Roodt will blend traditional music and the “weed dance” to expose the “inhumane slaughter and oppression” of the white Afrikaner. In order to attract the burgeoning black middle class, a new theme park in Cape Town’s southern suburbs will enable visitors to view “Constantia ladies” in their natural habitat and reveal the mystery of what they do all day. A proposed Gupta Compound tour will incorporate Saxonwold helicopter rides, bush sightings of furtive ministers, and much-sought-after free copies of The New Age newspaper. – Anthony Butler, having fun in his column in Business Day
