Fun With Lawyers

Is Tony Leon the Sunday Times’ Hogarth’s “Mampara of the Week”? No, not this time round. Instead, the letter written to the ANC, the YCL, and to yours truly (Domza) is the “Denial of the Week”! See the linked article. Leon is himself a lawyer by training (What was it Voltaire said about lawyers?) Another man who used to be a lawyer of sorts is Bulelani Ngcuka. He is famous for his very free interpretation of the phrase “prima facie”. Now he leads an eventful life in the guise of a very rich “businessman” and deputy-presidential consort. Probably he would say (like Sue Slipman long ago, while moving from the CPGB to the SDP): “My politics haven’t changed”. It’s two weeks since we have had a new text in the occasional “Revolutionary Classics” series, so here today (linked) is the second part of Engels’ “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific”. This one is dedicated to the ANC’s Michael Sachs, who at the Joe Slovo Memorial Seminar last Wednesday told the comrades that he was “dialectical” (and the SACP, presumably, not dialectical?). As Joe Slovo once said: to understand dialectics properly, you need a sense of humour. Links: Tony Leon, Denial of the Week, Hogarth, Sunday Times (250 words) Bulelani Ngcuka, No Prima Facie Evidence, Hogarth, S Times (142 words) Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific 2, Science of Dialectics, 1880 (3176 words)