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 the corrupt Ace Magashule
Controversial ANC secretary general and Free State Premier Ace Magashule is implicated in a dodgy property deal with the Free State Development Corporation (FDC) that saw his long-lost daughter score R9 million for doing nothing. … With the previous business shut down, the FDC could now start the process of transferring the property to Magashule’s daughter. Two sources familiar with the FDC’s handling of this deal claim that “the big man”, a reference to Magashule, had exerted pressure on FDC staff to ensure that Malembe’s trust became the property’s new owner. “When the FDC’s handling of this deal was questioned internally, FDC staff were told to keep out of it, seeing as the big man was behind it,” says one such source. Magashule denies this claim.
