The good, the bad and the ugly - Part 2

Execution of South African citizen – Janice Bronwyn Linden

Linden

At 04h30 hours the Chinese government predictably executed a South African citizen, despite high level pleas by our government and human rights groups. Janice Bronwyn Linden, 35, from KwaZulu-Natal was executed for being caught carrying three kilograms of crystal methamphetamine at an airport in that country in November 2008. Her crime was the attempted smuggling of this dangerous drug into China. Under Chinese law the penalty is death by lethal injection, unless the accused is prepared to admit and express contrition, then clemency is considered. Janice refused to accept responsibility or express remorse.

No reasonable person can resist being flooded with emotion about the cold blooded putting to death of another human being. It always grates one’s inner spirit. We feel deeply disturbed. This is because we are human. It is inherently offensive to our nature that another human be killed in cold blood. The other reason is that we are “hot wired” to simply forget the plight of the victim at the moment in time that the issue is raised. In our mind’s eye we do not see the victim lying in his/her grave, often in mutilated state. We don’t think of little children orphaned after their mother had been raped and decapitated.

Still, all this begs the fundamental issue of whether or not there are some who deserve to be deprived of their lives. The debate on this matter, usually referred to the “abolitionist debate” has raged on for decades. I have sentenced 5 murderers to death. I have had plenty of time to think about this issue, not as an academic imbued with esoteric/exotic theoretical notions of justice, righteous morality and pontifical intellectualism, but as a person with a highly developed Christian conscience, who has had to listen to, and live through, the evidence in which one person purposefully decides that another be gratuitously and cruelly killed, sometimes in circumstances of utmost depravity, as when a baby is raped and strangled … slowly!

In my book “The Other – without fear, favour or prejudice”, I examine the arguments propagated by the abolitionist camp. The reality is that they simply fall down badly when subjected to logical, philosophical and moral scrutiny. For instance I point out that there is no dispute that I am entitled to kill a person I find raping and strangling my wife or child. It then becomes quite impossible to draw a line in the sand and say that “well at this point/stage you are no longer entitled to kill him”. However, this still does not mean that capital punishment should be practiced. In my view, it should not! However this is not for the reasons conventionally advanced which, as said, do not stand up to scrutiny.

What I want to also draw attention to is how fickle and hypocritical most of us are on this issue, no doubt! See --- http://coginito.blogspot.com/2011/05/osama-bin-laden-some-are-good-even-bad.html where just about the whole world was exposed in this regard. The post unarguably proves that the ancients were indeed right in their adage of an “eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth…” howsoever much we may imagine that we now too “civilized” for such conduct. We are not! We are as barbaric as ever.
I concluded this in my book published last year and have just be proved right once again quite spectacularly The media is reporting that Saudi Arabia has just beheaded a woman after convicting her of practicing sorcery and witchcraft!? It is mind-boggling that one of the richest nations on this planet can do something so depraved and barbaric.

Janice Bronwyn Linden did not kill anybody. We also do not know if she was guilty. The standards of procedural and substantive justice in China are highly questionable. So this post does not judge her. We are all in sympathy with her family whose grief must be quite unimaginable.

What can be observed is that drug dealers, distributors and suppliers are responsible for untold human suffering and the terrible deaths of millions of our young folk in particular. To me this is not theory. I have been personally confronted with these truly heinous consequences. They don’t care tuppence how many lives are ruined or lost, as long as they can make money. The toll that they exact on humanity is unquantifiable. The Chinese logic is that they will take a life to save lives.

What is also pertinent to point out is that the Chinese have stated that under their law all are equal. For that reason Janice stood to suffer the same punishment that ordinary Chinese folk are subjected to. To that extent the Chinese cannot be faulted, if she was guilty.

This raises an analogous issue that has been in the media, the case of Shrien Dewani. A British Court has decided that he be extradited to South Africa to face charges involving the murder of his bride. The presiding judge was moved by a guarantee proffered by the SA government that, if convicted, Dewani would not be subjected to the same prison conditions as other SA prisoners. ???????

Put jurisprudentially, the British judge was prepared to subscribe to, support, connive and collude at persons beings being “unequal under law”. This is obviously highly offensive to any reasonable mind.

Also highly problematical about the judge’s approach is a failure to recognize that a government, whose term is limited to some 5 years at a time, is in no position to guarantee what the next government will do, accepting that, if convicted Dewani faces life imprisonment. The next government may well understandably (and correctly in my view) take a stance that it cannot be bound by an agreement in which a foreigner, in particular, is to favoured over its own citizens! Our constitution and laws expressly forbids unequal treatment.

Dewani needs to take the matter right up to the House of Lords. I humbly reiterate my advice that our government liaise with Switzerland, the country of the victim’s domicile, and get Shrien Dewani tried there!

The judiciary as a mistress.

In recent times the judiciary has been lectured, lambasted and repeatedly warned to maintain its place and to refrain from overruling the will of the people, as manifest in our ANC government’s decisions and laws. The President, the ANC Chief Whip and ANC Secretary General have all taken turns at this. This has happened even though the reality is that, if any judge does not understand that a judge must be apolitical, he/she is incompetent and should not be on the Bench. As an Acting Judge in the Eastern Cape I met many judges. I can give the categorical assurance that not one of them needs such lectures or advice. In fact it is grossly insulting. See “South Africa – a Constitutional Democracy under attack..”

There is now also a credible perception that, in addition, ANC leadership is implementing an agenda to “pack” the judiciary with “onside” judges, starting with the controversial appointment of Mogoeng Mogoeng, who was undoubtedly carefully handpicked for the post of Chief Justice, even though he was not the best candidate by a very long way. It is supposed that by having onside judges dodgy legislation, like the now internationally infamous Protection of State Information Bill, will be upheld by the courts.

If this is indeed the agenda, might I humbly, but passionately, advise and counsel ANC leadership to abandon it. It won’t work. It will not work! It will fail! I base my advice on my experiences as a judge and having attended international judicial conferences.

You see, once a human being is appointed as a judge, the psychological climate that he/she is then operating in is incredibly unique and different from that of the rest of us. It is a truism that judges lead lonely lives. Indeed they do, even though it is an incredibly fulfilling life. However it is not fulfilled by anything that any politician is able to offer. Once you appoint a person as a judge there is nothing more that you are able to offer, give or favour him/her with. Judges exist outside the circles in which assets, power and influence are traded in and dispensed.

Like any human being a judge needs personal affirmation on a continuous basis. That affirmation can only come from within judicial circles, not from outside. The judge becomes immersed in a world in which he/she is divorced from the hum drum of ordinary life and becomes preoccupied with developing a love for that which is good, that which is right, that which can be held up as truth for all to see. Truth becomes both the objective and the journey travelled, not polemics.

In addition, the way the system works, ensures that diversion from this path is quickly exposed. It is very difficult for a judge to give a bad judgment without soon knowing that he/she has stepped off the path and is losing the affirmation that we all crave. Your decisions and judgments are necessarily seen, considered and studied by your local and international community of judges, the legal sector, including legal scholars. It is members of this community that will react. You will then know, beyond doubt, whether or not you are in step or starting on a maverick path. Probably the worst maverick path a judge can chose to take is one in which he/she is then seen by his/her peers as beholden to a politician. It is about as reprehensible as incest. The psychological pressure is both overarching and subconsciously enormously insistent.

It was therefore not at all surprising to me when, despite the highly visible and loud warnings, admonitions and counsel, the Supreme Court of Appeal handed down a very keenly worded judgment that the appointment of Menzi Simelane as the Director of the National Prosecuting Authority was unconstitutional for being irrational.

Put simply, once a person is appointed as a judge he/she will feel compelled to start acting like a judge --- not a politician. Ask the previous Nationalist Party that burnt its finger very badly when it tried to “take over the Bench” by appointed “onside” people as judges. In my book “The Other – without fear, favour or prejudice” I explain how I always felt a “dual personality”.  There was Chris Greenland, an ordinary man, pretty terrified of the very Court he was presiding over, and there was Judge Greenland, who carried out a sacred office with due decorum. There were decisions that I handed down, which I did not “personally” support. However, as a judge, I was satisfied that they were right.

Lady Justice

So my appeal to ANC leadership is that, if that is your plan, don’t do it. Appointing people other than on merit will only result in South Africa having a mediocre Bench. As a result all citizens will eventually suffer.

It is not possible to have the judiciary as a mistress. The mistress will find love, comfort and satisfaction elsewhere. There is nothing you will be able to offer to keep her loyal.

Jackie Selebi

Further to what has been posted in Part 1, please read the outstanding article by Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya titled “Shame on those who sold our integrity to save their skins”.

The good, the bad and the ugly --- Part 1

Jackie Selebi

As reported by the Sowetan, here we have a man who went from hero to zero. It is said that he is now on a dialysis machine on account of chronic kidney failure. It would appear that Selebi started succumbing to health problems the instant he heard that the court had decided that he deserved to be incarcerated for some 15 years for corruption.
Ordinary human beings cannot but feel mixed emotions about the whole Selebi saga. Here is a man that made a very valuable contribution to our liberation. Now we are throwing him into prison for 15 years. Given that he is in his mid 60s, the sentence more or less means the end of his life as a free man.

I must be abnormal. I have no mixed emotions. I feel only a solemn exaltation that he is reaping what he has sowed. I have this picture of an arrogant politico, strutting about with complete disdain for our concerns. These included his relationship with a self confessed drug lord, Glen Agliotti. He gave us the proverbial finger saying “he is my friend, finished and klaar”. As our Chief of Police he should have been first in the fight against our pandemic levels of crime. Instead he was first as a corruption don. A more disgraceful course of conduct is hard to imagine, especially given the fact that he had somehow managed to wheedle his way to being head of Interpol as well. Wow! Selebi personifies the ultimate betrayal.

To him, our concerns were irrelevant. They were irrelevant in terms of a prevailing mindset, spawned in a well established climate of patronage. As a member of a new elite he was unaccountable to us ordinary folk. Being “more equal than others”, on our version of animal farm, he was entitled to do as he liked, when he liked and how he liked, whether we liked it or not.

Treating us as the ignorant foolish masses, he disdainfully claimed “these hands are clean”, fully expecting us, as sheep on the farm, to simply accept the word of one of our new breed of leaders. He saw himself as one of the “untouchables”. The arrogance was nauseating. The man was assured, comfortable and supremely confident that he was indeed untouchable.

He was; thanks to our then president Thabo Mbeki. Despite mounting information, propagated by our then free media sector, President Thabo Mbeki, made it clear that Selebi was his man and, as such, was untouchable, just as 'Manto' Edmie Tshabalala-Msimang (then Minister of Health) had been, despite proof that she was a convicted thief who had stolen from her own patients as a ward sister.

What the Mbeki camp, including Selebi, did not foresee was Polokwane. The 52nd National Conference of the African National Congress (ANC) was held in Polokwane, Limpopo from December 16 to December 20, 2007. By vote of “ordinary branch members” of the ANC Thabo Mbeki was removed as leader of the ANC and that guaranteed his subsequent removal as president.

Jackie Selebi lost his patron. He lost protection. He lost his status of being “more equal than others”. He reverted to being one of us, unprotected, vulnerable and accountable. The law jumped on him, took its course and visited him with what he fully deserved. A very big crook is where he deserves to be - in jail.

Lets us be thankful that, in this case, justice has been done, and seen to be done. For that we are thankful, firstly to the ANC’s marvelous process in which ordinary human beings have a voice to effect change that is needed. Secondly, we are blessed with the right to information that a free media deals in, for our benefit. This is now under severe threat on account of the now infamous Protection of State Information Bill. Thirdly we have independent courts manned by conscientious judicial officers acting without fear, favour or prejudice. This may also now be under threat, as there appears to be an agenda to “pack” the courts with “onside” judges starting with a carefully handpicked Chief Justice. 

A question that is arising is - will this big time crook actually serve his sentence? He has become "very sick" with exquisite timing. It is now being claimed that the prison hospitals do not have the capacity to treat him. Shabir Shaik was relieved of the obligation to serve his sentence on the basis of illness. There can be no doubt that Selebi is seeking the same indulgence.

Will he get it? He is a club member. He is part of the new elite. He is entitled to be treated as "more equal than others". Are we not on our own version of "animal farm"?

I would not take any bets on this. Really!

Dr Conrad Murray

As I predicted, the “bad” doctor has been rightly convicted by a jury of ordinary human beings, and sentenced by a judge to the maximum permissible under United States law.

Many have said that they see Michael Jackson (MJ) as the problem and Murray as a victim. Nothing could be more misguided. Like millions of other human beings on this planet, MJ was in serious trouble. He was a drug addict. His latest drug of choice was propofol. He did what he needed to do. He employed a doctor, at very generous remuneration, to help him manage his problem.

What Murray did was to firstly feed his patient with gallons of the drug. MJ was suffering from severe sleep disorder. Understand that propofol is not sleep disorder medication. It is an anesthetic. It does not induce sleep. It induces unconsciousness, so that surgeons can operate. Unless very carefully monitored, the patient can die. On TV this morning I watched a program where a vet was performing a small operation on the hoof of a zebra. His assistant kept his hand on the chest of the zebra throughout the operation so as to monitor the animal’s state of unconsciousness. Murray did not carefully monitor MJ. He did not have the equipment to do this. In addition he was busy phoning around, including phoning a girlfriend. That is when MJ died. Murray was not equipped to resuscitate his patient, and his “claimed” attempts were pathetic in the extreme.

In short Dr Conrad Murray played Russian roulette with his patient, and it cost MJ his life. Under our law I would have had no hesitation to convict of murder on the basis of “constructive intent”. Constructive intent is present when you can foresee death as a reasonable possibility and are reckless as to whether or not it occurs. That was exactly Murray’s conduct, sustained recklessness as to whether or not JM died.
The High Court in Cape Town has just convicted a Taxi driver, Jacob Humphreys, of 10 counts of murder for "recklessly' driving his vehicle across a level crossing, resulting in it being hit by a train. Note that the judge also said that Humphreys played "Russian roulette" with the lives of his passengers.
Murray ceased to be a doctor and became a drug dealer. Because of his criminal conduct the world lost the greatest entertainer of all time. Elvis Presley had the looks, the voice and the physique. Michael Jackson had the magic.

Justice has been done, and seen to be done.

COP 17             

It is the last day of this terribly important talk shop. The World descended on Durban. Many South Africans were led by our ministers in “feeling proud”. And yes, we do feel proud that we can host such an event, just as we all felt rather great to have hosted the Soccer World Cup.

Congratulations must be extended to our International Relations and Cooperation Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabaneour, who was the official host of the whole thing. She was always beautiful to look at, personable and marvelously upbeat, even when the going seemed to be bad, with the big powers like the United States, China and Canada, in particular, playing up.

Personally I don’t buy the argument that we are causing climate change. I am a 100% climate change sceptic. The science is quite dodgy, and is credibly disputed by reputable scientists. This planet has being undergoing cyclical periods of climate change from day one. That is a simple fact. In addition volcanoes and animals (burping and farting), in years past, pushed more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than we have done in decades. That is another fact. The last and critically important fact is that whatever else scientist may disagree on, they all agree that they really have little understanding of how the planet used to have massive climate changes in the past. It is known that that the sun can play havoc with our climate. That is a fact. Sunspots have their own cyclical activity, and in days gone by there was no one to record and monitor this, as is the case now. 

However we do need to understand that the World, led by the United Nations, needs a big issue to be concerned about. The UN needs to justify its existence. Climate change is now perhaps the biggest industry on the planet. HIV/AIDS is losing its allure. We now have HIV/AIDS fatigue; no question! And climate change, which started off as “global warming”, until the proponents were embarrassed by reality, has developed into a very huge industry indeed. And as was the case with HIV/AIDS, serious money is being made by any amount of entities and people who are connected to the thing. It is big business, very big business.

Let me give you an unarguable example of the inherent lack of good faith/(hypocrisy) that the UN is infused with. As early as 1994 the UN got just about every nation to solemnly commit to taking effective measures to relieve the plight of road crash victims. Please note that over 95% of road crash victims are entirely innocent, as only one or more of the drivers can ever be actually responsible for a road crash. Next, and this is very important, road crash victims are the second biggest pandemic on this planet, after HIV/AIDS. In supporting documentation the UN published statistics that showed that, for many countries, the cost exceeded their entire aid budget. So in 1994, the UN was rightly gearing itself up to adopt the road crash victim issue as a major issue that we should all be concerned with. For reasons, that probably have to do with the fact that the whole insurance and legal sectors stood to lose, rather than gain, if the UN intervened on behalf of road crash victims it, in effect, abandoned its enthusiasm for this issue. So to-day we only have New Zealand, the State of Victoria in Australia, Botswana, Namibia and those few countries that have full scale social welfare, that have an efficient and effective victim orientated model for road crash casualties. Everywhere else the victim, who might be a five year old child, or even a child in utero, is left to find the guilty driver and fight with his/her insurer for justice.

I have tried strenuously to proposition the UN on this issue and have received hardly an acknowledgement in return. There is simply no explanation for the UN to be concerned about HIV/AIDS victims, (mostly self inflicted) and simply ignore the plight of the victims of the next biggest pandemic on this planet, other than crass hypocrisy and pandering to vested interests of big business. I challenge anyone to refute this.

Understand that whatever the UN decides to promote will have many takers. It provides huge opportunity at both personal and organizational levels. 

The other problem, regrettably, is the venue and/or host. The reality is that South Africa is one of the worst offenders when it comes to polluting the atmosphere. And what is more is that it is fully committed to continuing in this mode, with the building of the World’s biggest coal fired electricity power station posted as non negotiable. In all seriousness, would you host an anti-crime conference in the house of one of Al Capone’s gang bosses? It is somewhat obscene to hold SA as a credible leader on the matter of climate change.

It does bring to mind the Soccer World Cup. This was also hailed as a great success for SA. It suited international politics and SA that it be hosted here. The reality is that it cost a fortune for a country of scarce resources and conferred no discernable benefits. That much is no longer even argued. See --- http://coginito.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-world-cup-moment.html

Still I support the climate change initiative. Anything that makes us better planetary citizens is a good thing. We really do need to stop abusing the planet and other creatures. We are wasteful, predatory, irresponsible and downright venal as planetary citizens. It needs to stop.

I would encourage everybody to join Friends of the Earth International, whatever you may believe in.

And, once again, we must congratulate our Minister of International Affairs for a job well done.