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
S v Shaik
Not only was that evidence exhaustively examined and weighed by the trial court but it is clear in the overall picture that the underlined words were in the nature of an understatement. One finds elsewhere in the judgment, when specific issues were resolved in favour of the State, passages in which his evidence was unmistakably said to be rejected as false. Obviously there was much in his evidence that was not only believable standing alone but there were parts that were supported by documentary evidence or circumstance. The real issue on this count is whether it is a reasonable inference (not just a possible inference) that the payments made to Zuma or on his behalf were prompted by friendship, or were just loans, and in neither event made with the criminal intent alleged in the charge. In that regard Shaik’s credibility is crucial. Having deliberated painstakingly, the trial court rejected Shaik’s evidence on that issue and held that the inference referred to was not a reasonable one and could therefore be ruled out.
