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
Sections 46(1)(d) and 105(1)(d) respectively provide that the National Assembly and Provincial Legislatures consist of women and men elected in terms of an electoral system that “results, in general, in proportional representation”. The respondents argued that this refers to an exclusive party proportional representation system. OUTA argued, correctly in my view, that proportionality does not equal exclusive party proportional representation. The idea of proportional representation is not inconsonant with independent candidate representation. These sections make no reference to party proportional representation, let alone exclusive party proportional representation. The focus of the sections is on the “result”: whoever the participants may be, the system must be one that “results, in general, in proportional representation”.
