A good week

It’s only been 233 years in the making, but the US Supreme Court finally has a black woman on its bench. Last week, the Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson’s appointment by 53 to 47 votes. After a gruelling round of confirmation hearings — in which she had to fend off baseless claims from those far less qualified than herself — Jackson certainly deserved the standing ovation she received in the chamber. Still, the occasion was marred as several Republican senators did a runner for the door. You’d really think they could muster up just a smidgen of respect. 

A bad week

Is there no barrel bottom serial victim and former president Jacob Zuma won’t scrape in his bid to stay out of jail? His decade-in-the-making corruption trial has again been postponed — this time to allow the Supreme Court of Appeal to reconsider his application to have prosecutor Billy Downer removed. But it was the threat from Zuma that was so odious: the sinister, if veiled, suggestion that SA could see a repeat of the deadly July 2021 violence if he didn’t get his postponement. How’s that for trying to hold a judicial system — an entire country, even — to ransom? Enough already.