The Constitutional Court judgment on Nkandla and the powers of the public protector has been hanging above the heads of President Jacob Zuma and the African National Congress government like an unexploded bomb. That it was delivered on Thursday, a mere six weeks after counsel for both side delivered their summations, was a sign that […]
Mogoeng Mogoeng
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Mogoeng: Give truth a sporting chance
You know the ol’ Mark Twain witticism: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes?” Well … I got a lesson in that this week. When I got to thinking about it (and I’ll get to it in a sec), this saying sprung to mind, and – […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Are today’s secularists really secular?
By Ryan Peter Yesterday my Twitter feed went crazy after Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng’s speech “ Law and Religion in Africa” was posted on the internet. In it our chief justice talks about “how the interplay between law and religion could yield a product that is for the common good of all in Africa’s pluralistic […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Oh my Gad! Chief Justice Mogoeng wants to mix religion and law
For many who spent their childhood in Pretoria, they’ll remember all too well the threats parents wielded to curb errant behaviour. They would temper a lust for misadventure with the threat of the stout school in Hammanskraal. A hint of madness would be tempered with the threat of Weskoppies in Pretoria West. And any bent […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Please, no God: not in our courts, not in Parliament, not in government
One of the great ironies of organised religions is that their adherents can only live in peace within a secular state. Those states that embrace a faith are usually at war with themselves or at war with others. Where governments adopt religion, they tend to corrupt and pervert that religion until it becomes something almost […]
Posted inGender violence, News/Politics
What do parents of rape victims think of crime stats?
Last year a close friend and neighbour who lived two houses away was murdered. As he lay bleeding to death on the floor of his bedroom after being hit on the back of his neck by a laptop — so hard that the laptop bent — I am sure my friend would have been pleased […]