POINT OF ORDER
TIM COHEN: Zuma’s trials are like a never-ending dirge
Mahomed Navsa's formidable judgment points to the bizarre nature of the case and its winding trajectory
What is it about South African judges, poetry and trials involving President Jacob Zuma? When Judge Willem van der Merwe found in 2006 that the future president had not in fact raped Fezekile Kuzwayo, because the sex was consensual, he proffered some advice. "Had Rudyard Kipling known of this case at the time he wrote his poem If, he might have added the following: ‘And if you can control your body and your sexual urges, then you are a man, my son’," the judge said. It is hard to imagine a more toe-curling piece of advice or a more inappropriate vehicle. It was written as a tribute to Leander Starr Jameson, the leader of the ill-fated Jameson Raid, which led to the Boer war; hardly a figure of great reverence in the new SA, never mind the old. The poem is a paean to stoicism, but the judge was recommending restraint, surely a different thing. Despite the inappropriate vehicle, it is sad his advice was never heeded. In his judgment in what has become known as the spy tapes case, Acti...
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