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
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.
