South Africa's heart of darkness

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James Myburgh writes:

But it seems to me that this passage provides a profound insight into the descent of Europe into the moral abyss following Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Contemporaneous accounts by German dissidents document a moment, in March of that year, at which opposition to the Nazi takeover simply collapsed. In his diary entry of March 10 1933 Victor Klemperer noted: "A complete revolution and party dictatorship. And all opposing forces as if vanished from the face of the earth... No one dares say anything any more, everyone is afraid." Looking back from his exile in Britain in 1939 the German writer, Sebastian Haffner, wrote "the moral inadequacy of the German character shown in that month is too monstrous to suppose that history will not one day call them to account for it."

There is also a strong drift of our society towards corruption. One sign of this is the fading power of the law. It seems that the criminal justice system is becoming so weakened that anyone stupid or arrogant enough to get caught can still escape real punishment provided they have the money to pay off the right policeman, or, at a grander level, employ lawyers to pursue a strategy of endless appeals. The Scorpions are currently being dismantled because the powerful and corrupt have finally had enough of living in holy terror of investigation, exposure, and prosecution.

Yet for all this, one of the redeeming qualities of South African society is that it has thrown up individuals willing to take a stand against the prevailing power and opinion. The current predicament of Vusi Pikoli illustrates all that is good and bad in our society. Here is an individual who remained faithful to his constitutional obligations to prosecute without fear and favour, even though it cost him his position.

Such stubbornness makes him as threatening to the new ANC leadership, as it did to the old, and they are hastening to get rid of him for good. ANC MPs, many of whom were shocked at his initial suspension, are now preparing to make his removal permanent. His successor will no doubt be someone who is sufficiently malleable, incompetent or corrupt, to be relied upon not to prosecute wrongdoing by senior officials of the regime.

http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=116219&sn=Detail