Zapiro's Blog, page 2

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The Marikana Report - The Poephol Shall Govern!

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20 Years later 1995 Remembered

Omar Bashir flew out of South Africa on June 15 as world powers and activists were urging the government to arrest him under a warrant from the global court on charges of masterminding genocide and other atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region. Bashir's plane was allowed to take off even though a Pretoria court had issued an order banning him from leaving until the end of a hearing on his case. "A democratic state based on the rule of law cannot exist or function if the government ignores its constitutional obligations and fails to abide by court orders," High Court Judge Dustan Mlambo said in a televised statement in court. Stephen Grootes says the ANC needs to respect the Constitution which it often likes to claim it gave us. It says something for the mixture of cynicism and pessimism in our political and legal circles, that once the Southern African Litigation Centre brought its application to have al-Bashir arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court, no one seriously thought that it would actually happen. Almost everyone who understood the issues knew that the courts would order his detention, but no one thought that this order would be carried out. It says something about our president, and the state of the ANC right now, that there was always only one way that this would end. 20 years ago was the celebration of 1995 Rugby World Cup final, it was a time when the South African president was an international statesman of the highest order. South Africa led the world with nuclear disarmament, we were a fledgling democracy talking about a progressive constitution that would take South Africa into the new millennium as a leader of equality and human rights.South Africa were a production line for Nobel peace laureates. South Africa's  name was synonymous with “miracle” and the leaders of the ANC oozed gravitas. South Africa  were the darlings of the world. Then, as if written in the stars, Nelson Mandela wore Francois Pienaar’s jersey and the Springboks beat the mighty All Blacks of New Zealand to win the World Cup.

 

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Racism and Hatred in the United States

Dylan Roof’s race-hate driven murder of nine African-American congregants at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina is just the most recent of numerous acts of racist violence perpetrated by whites on blacks in the US, including some attacks by police officers which have gone unpunished despite the evidence of video footage. Roof was wearing a shirt with the old South African flag and the old Rhodesian flag but there’s evidence that he was also inspired by the Ku Klux Klan which still exists in southern states of the US and whose hooded robes have become the recognisable symbol of white racist extremism.

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EFF Parliamentary Performance - #PayBacktheMoney

Despite an agreement between parliamentary parties that questions to the president continue, the EFF persisted in shouting "Pay back the money", even as Zuma took to the podium to answer questions. Parliament descended into chaos and proceedings were halted as the EFF isolated itself from other opposition parties by preventing President Jacob Zuma from answering questions related to his accountability.

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150621st

Jacob Zuma's 'War and Peace' Approach to South Africa's Foreign Policy

The astonishing aspect to the diplomatic debacle involving Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir is not that this genocidal maniac was allowed to leave South Africa. It was that he was allowed to come here in the first place. Al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Darfur conflict. Already more than 300 000 people have been killed, with another 2.5 million displaced. This means war criminals are allowed in the country but Nobel Peace laureates such as Dalai Lama aren't. China is South Africa's single largest trading partner so President sucks up to China by denying the Dalai Lama an entry visa to attend a Cape Town gathering of Nobel Peace laureates. It is difficult to discern the morality behind not permitting the pacifist Dalai Lama , while allowing a murderous despot facing an international arrest warrant to attend an AU summit in Joburg.

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Hollow Man (continued)

While visiting South Africa for an African Union summit, the country’s high court issued an interim order to prevent Omar al-Bashir leaving the country in order to answer international criminal charges (accused of being a mass murderer of 300,000 deaths in Darfur. President Jacob Zuma had other ideas and facilitated his exit. Omar al-Bashir was allowed to escape the country in a private jet – in defiance of the domestic court order and international law. In October 2013, an extraordinary AU summit was called to deliberate the role of the ICC within Africa. The member states agreed to fight the ICC, and its global influence, through diplomatic channels by appealing to the United Nations Security Council. They chose to limit the ICC's mandate to take cases on any sitting heads of state and senior officials of governments across Africa. To do this, they expanded the powers of a unified African court and called on countries to individually withdraw from the Rome Statute, which established the ICC. By honouring this AU decision, South Africa directly disregarded its duties to the ICC, to the global community, and to its own judiciary's decision that issued the court order, which restricted Bashir's travel.In justifying their actions, the ANC painted Bashir as the latest in a long line of Africans to suffer agenda-driven prosecution. What is of great significance is the fact that the Zuma administration’s connivance with al-Bashir, would appear to be in contempt of court and thereby a threat to the legal and constitutional basis of South African governance. The independence and integrity of the judiciary upto now has been a bedrock of South African democracy based on the rule of law. South African law is clear. The Pretoria High Court is a superior court. A decision made by such a court may only be appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal or even the Constitutional Court, both of which are primarily appellant courts. Absent such an appeal, the high court’s ruling stands. The Zuma government filed no appeal in the al-Bashir case.

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150614st

Nkandla - Enough is Enough

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150612mg

The Story Behind Zapiro's Cartoon Published on the 2 Dec 2007

In a shocking revelation (see Marianne Thamm’s Daily Maverick article  http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-06-10-zuma-corruption-charges-lead-npa-prosecutor-throws-weight-behind-da-spy-tapes-court-challenge/#.VXfo2fmqpHx ), former NPA head Mokotedi Mpshe told NPA prosecutor  Billy Downer in December 2007 that it was seeing himself in a Zapiro cartoon that prompted him not to charge Jacob Zuma with corruption before the ANC Polokwane’s conference in case it looked as if the NPA was standing in the way of Zuma’s becoming ANC’s president.



As acting head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in 2009, Mpshe dropped corruption charges against Zuma on the grounds that the timing of these charges had been manipulated in December 2007 by Leonard Mc Carthy and Bulelani Ngcuka. In Billy Downer’s recently-released explosive affidavit it is alleged that it was Mpshe himself who manipulated the timing of the charges and then blamed this on others, knowing that this was a lie and that the charges themselves were  still substantive enough to warrant going ahead with the prosecution.



Zapiro did not label Mpshe in the cartoon itself but did do a recognisable caricature of him. It would  appear that Mpshe was embarrassed at being portrayed as someone hindering Zuma’s progress to  the ANC presidency. Whether he was misguidedly trying to appear impartial or whether he was  currying favour with the Zuma cabal is anyone’s guess. But he was manipulating the timing of the charges in favour of Zuma and, in the Byzantine world of ANC politics, he later pinned the blame for the timing manipulation on others who he said were doing this to favour Thabo Mbeki!

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Jacob Applying His Mind to the Marikana Report

Over a month after getting the Marikana massacre inquiry report, President Jacob Zuma still isn’t saying if or when he will release it to the public. President Jacob Zuma says it would be inappropriate for him to release the Marikana report before he’s properly ‘applied his mind’ to its findings.

Zuma was handed the report by Judge Ian Farlam at the end of March and has since come under mounting pressure, including the threat of legal action to make it public.

During a violent and unprotected strike, officers opened fire on thousands of protesters. Spokesman Harold Maloka said yesterday that Zuma was still applying his mind. “The report could bring vindication or ignominy; resolution or anguish. Waiting for it, knowing that the president has it, but not knowing what it says, is almost unbearable. The families are in a state of nervous exhaustion,” wrote Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI) attorney Nomzamo Zondo in an affidavit to the North Gauteng High Court.

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071202st

Zuma on his way to Polokwane with NPA at his Heels

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