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
On State Capture
On the face of it, the Bosasa story sounds all too familiar – except this time, it is not three brothers from India who found themselves friends to a president, but rather an Eastern Cape businessman with struggle credentials and cronies with no qualms. His name is Gavin Watson. Watson has close links to the ANC thanks to struggle credentials that involved the Watson brothers refusing to play for all white rugby teams pre-1994. Watson was not alone. His right hand man for 17 years was Angelo Agrizzi, a boisterous, flashy Italian with a penchant for fast Ferraris. A host of other executives, each with their own connections to the political realm joined along the way, opening more doors. Now Agrizzi is pulling the plug. He is finally going to speak out about his years at Bosasa – the millions allegedly paid in bribes, the covert operations to destroy evidence to keep government investigators in the dark and how a Krugersdorp company that started out providing catering at mine hostels became a billion rand tender machine.
