Quote of the week
Mr Zuma is no ordinary litigant. He is the former President of the Republic, who remains a public figure and continues to wield significant political influence, while acting as an example to his supporters… He has a great deal of power to incite others to similarly defy court orders because his actions and any consequences, or lack thereof, are being closely observed by the public. If his conduct is met with impunity, he will do significant damage to the rule of law. As this Court noted in Mamabolo, “[n]o one familiar with our history can be unaware of the very special need to preserve the integrity of the rule of law”. Mr Zuma is subject to the laws of the Republic. No person enjoys exclusion or exemption from the sovereignty of our laws… It would be antithetical to the value of accountability if those who once held high office are not bound by the law.
Secretary of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State v Zuma and Others (CCT 52/21) [2021] ZACC 18
Neo-liberals and racism
Other neoliberals may not have endorsed this kind of racism, but when demands for equality between the races threatened to result in the redistribution of property, their positions often converged with Röpke’s. Hayek publicly opposed the use of sanctions against apartheid (even an arms embargo went too far), and didn’t favour black majority rule unless the state could first be stripped of its powers to do economic mischief. He confided to his secretary that he liked blacks no better than Jews. In 1976, Milton Friedman spoke up in Newsweek for white minority rule in Rhodesia, and visited the University of Cape Town to explain to its predominantly white, segregated student body his opposition to universal suffrage in South Africa.
