Quote of the week
Early in 2016, a racist outburst by a white woman in KwaZulu-Natal, Penny Sparrow, ridiculing Black beachgoers as ‘monkeys’, and announcing that thenceforth she would ‘address the [B]lacks of South Africa as monkeys’, published in her online profile, was quickly disseminated countrywide. It convulsed South Africa in shame and acrid anger. The [Constitutional] Court was not unaffected. Previous members of the Constitutional Court took comfort in reflecting, with evident satisfaction, on the absence of racially loaded and racially defined splits. Dramatically, these now fractured the Court.
"Rainbows and Realities: Justice Johan Froneman in the Explosive Terrain of Linguistic and Cultural Rights" - Constitutional Court Review
Con Court on Walus parole
The Minister said, among other things, that “in the light of the nature of the crime [the applicant] committed and in the light of the sentence remarks by the trial court and the Supreme Court of Appeal, [to release the applicant on parole] will negate their remarks that the offender’s atrocious crime demands the severest punishment which the law permits”. (Emphasis added). The severest punishment that a prisoner may serve in South Africa is a life imprisonment where he or she is not granted parole. This could happen in a case, for example, where a prisoner is such that he or she does not meet the requirements for parole. In this regard one could think of a prisoner who commits offences while in prison itself or who is always causing trouble in prison and does not show signs of rehabilitation.
