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
Constitutional Court on African Women
African women under apartheid were systemically disenfranchised in a number of ways. It is important to recognise that the pervasive effects of patriarchy meant that women were often excluded even from seemingly gender-neutral spaces. The perception of women as the lesser gender was, and may still be, a widely-held societal view that meant that even where legislation did not demand the subjugation of women, the practices of officials and family members were still tainted by a bias towards men. The prioritisation of men is particularly prevalent in spheres of life that are seen as stereotypically masculine, such as labour, property, and legal affairs.
