Holier than thou just sucks!

I don’t know how many of you have seen the footage of Solomon Mahlangu’s final walk to his execution at Pretoria Central on April 6 1979 but I personally found it very disturbing. Even though I was already an attorney while the death penalty was still in force I was fortunate enough during the murder trials that I have argued, never to have been faced with this barbaric penalty should my clients have been found guilty.

How I would have dealt with watching a client of mine being butchered in the name of “justice” is something that doesn’t bear thinking about. Worse, perhaps exponentially so, would have been watching a man hang who did not even fire a bullet let alone kill anyone. (His story is set out in the link above)

So you’ll forgive me if I find it just a tad ironic to listen to our former president FW de Klerk boycotting a local meeting because the Dalai Lama was denied a visa to South Africa or would have been denied a visa had he requested one. Was this the same member of the South African Parliament from 1978 who served under those great humanitarians BJ Vorster and then PW Botha? A cabinet member of the old National Party who was not exactly noted for being the leading liberal of his day.

That self-same National Party cabinet which rejected calls for mercy for Mahlangu from almost every humanitarian organisation in existence, the United Nations, President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Tutu, you name it they begged for this man’s life. Yet Jimmy Kruger and his thugs were going to execute come what may.

Of course as South Africans we are indebted to De Klerk for the courage that he showed in the creation of the multiracial democracy that exists today. I would however suggest that with the human rights aberrations committed in the name of the National Party while he was a cabinet member that he leave boycotting in the name of human rights to the younger generation.

Next to what was done to Mahlangu in the name of (insert any reason you think might justify this disgrace here) snubbing the Dalai Lama is like forgetting to turn up to your wife’s birthday.

Holier than thou just sucks!