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
Zondo on cadre deployment
President Ramaphosa’s evidence was that most of those appointments had nothing to do with the Deployment Committee. He however stopped short of implicating former President Zuma in wrongdoing. He did not explain why the ANC allowed the former President to bypass a critical party structure so frequently. This is especially surprising considering that both he and Mr Mantashe vigorously defended the importance and necessity of cadre deployment at the Commission, as well as the party’s insistence that all members are beholden to the decisions of its structures (democratic centralism). According to President Ramaphosa, some of those appointments did go through the Deployment Committee, but the Committee did not know that those individuals would engage in any corrupt acts. The unfortunate implication of this is that the Deployment Committee had been unable to select or recommend individuals who are “fit for purpose.” It had repeatedly recommended individuals alleged to be involved in corruption or other unethical behaviour, as well as individuals with public ties to the Gupta family, who were publicly known since 2011 to be involved in corruption.
