Quote of the week
Mr Zuma is no ordinary litigant. He is the former President of the Republic, who remains a public figure and continues to wield significant political influence, while acting as an example to his supporters… He has a great deal of power to incite others to similarly defy court orders because his actions and any consequences, or lack thereof, are being closely observed by the public. If his conduct is met with impunity, he will do significant damage to the rule of law. As this Court noted in Mamabolo, “[n]o one familiar with our history can be unaware of the very special need to preserve the integrity of the rule of law”. Mr Zuma is subject to the laws of the Republic. No person enjoys exclusion or exemption from the sovereignty of our laws… It would be antithetical to the value of accountability if those who once held high office are not bound by the law.
Secretary of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State v Zuma and Others (CCT 52/21) [2021] ZACC 18
Some platitudes on returning to South Africa
I arrived back yesterday after almost three weeks in Eastern Europe, where I remained blissfully unaware of the media-reported (and sometimes generated) ups and downs of South African politics. I am trying to get back in to my habit of obsessively following the (often parochial) South African media and twitter conversations, but somehow it all still feels rather unreal and irrelevant.
The most interesting place we visited in Eastern Europe was Lviv (spelt Львів in the Cyrillic script) in Ukraine, a beautiful city in a country that is clearly still struggling with its demons from the twentieth century: anti-Semitism and the extermination of a third of the population of the city in the Holocaust; Soviet and Nazi occupation and it becoming part of the Soviet Union (former USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev was born in Ukraine) and its relatively late and stunted attempt at gaining its freedom in 2004.
As we wandered through the streets admiring the many beautiful buildings in renaissance, baroque and the classic styles as well as the many Art Nouveau and Art Deco masterpieces, the reality kept on impinging on the fairy-tale, with many skin-heads and young men in camouflage outfits skulking around and old woman desperately flogging home-made cookies or ugly trinkets. Being aware that homophobia and racism is rife in the Ukraine also left an uneasy feeling.
As often happens when one travels, one is reminded of the fact that South Africa is not as unique as we are often told. Our citizens does not appear to be more wicked or more virtuous than those who live in Ukraine or Hungary; our politicians do not appear more (but also not less) competent or venal than their counterparts in Poland or Hungary (both countries currently being governed by right wing political parties); and although our economic problems may seem intractable and our government incapable or unwilling to deal with them, the same anxiety about the future and sense of impending doom stalks much of Europe at present.
Until tomorrow when I would have gotten back on the hamster wheel of South African politics, these are the only platitudes I have to offer.
Lastly, I would like to thank Jaco Barnard-Naude for writing this Blog in my absence. Judging from all the comments section, readers found his particular inputs interesting and stimulating – as did I.
