Quote of the week
As seductive as certain perspectives of international law may appear to those who disagree with the outcome of the interpretative exercise conducted by this Court in the contempt judgment, sight must not be lost of the proper place of international law, especially in respect of an application for rescission. The approach that my Brother adopts may be apposite in the context of an appeal, where a court is enjoined to consider whether the court a quo erred in its interpretation of the law. Although it should be clear by now, I shall repeat it once more: this is not an appeal, for this Court’s orders are not appealable. I am deeply concerned that seeking to rely on articles of the ICCPR as a basis for rescission constitutes nothing more than sophistry.
Zuma v Secretary of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector Including Organs of State and Others (CCT 52/21) [2021] ZACC 28 (17 September 2021)
On humanity and racism
What sort of community is envisioned by the first-person plural ‘we?’ What do ‘we’ within this community hold in ‘common’ and how is that holding-in-‘common’ socially and politically organized? And what is meant by ‘humanity’ and its corollaries: ‘the human,’ ‘humanism,’ ‘humane?’ The anti-racist invocation of ‘our’ ‘common’ ‘humanity’ is evidence of a belief in – or more likely a longing for – a state of being that is deeper than and anterior to the imposition of race. If ‘we’ are all ‘human’ after all, then surely racism and racist violence are illegitimate; it will not do for one ‘human’ to oppress, exploit, torture, kill another.
