CHARMAIN NAIDOO: When the rule of law goes, anything goes

My father’s most terrifying stories always began with Once Upon A Time. He’d teasingly insist that they were “cross my heart and hope to die” true. Since that was the oath preferred by schoolgirls, (I was a schoolgirl), and steeped in the religious significance of the cross – coupled with my father’s staunch Catholicism – I trusted the veracity of the tales of terror. They always had a didactic theme. Lessons, my father believed, like Jesus before him, should be told and learnt through parables.There were a number of subjects: the inherent dangers of not telling the truth to the mortal sin caused by theft. At the end of the “always tell the truth” story Lying Lily gets dangled over the edge of a cliff. From the bottomless pit below came a stinky, smoky sulphuric gas. Fire and brimstone Dad would say. In the end, my Dad always allowed for some sort of redemption. Lying Lily repents and is, of course, rescued by an angel and flown to safety. Light fingered Lily didn’t fare so well. Sh...