Shaik Judge Wobbles

Judge Hilary Squires, retired, was hired like the infamous Judge Ransley Thacker of old for a tidy sum. His job was to harrumph and bluster at Schabir Shaik, to crush him thoroughly, and then to keep his mouth shut. No doubt those who hired Squires hoped that the old boffin would be in his coffin soon enough, and dead men tell no tales. But Squires is not stupid. He knows that Shaik’s case is a stalking horse for bigger game, such as Jacob Zuma. He knows better than to leave things to chance. So he was very careful not to use the unconstitutional phrase, “generally corrupt relationship”, that the over-eager prosecutor Billy Downer hung out like bait. Imagine Squires' horror when the appeal judges seized the same bait and put the deadly words back into his mouth! Actually you don’t have to imagine very hard, because the old boy wrote it down and posted it off to the Business Day (see attached letter and article from the Weekender). The Judge is going to find that “spilling rice is easy but picking it up is difficult”. This is so whether you spilt the rice yourself, or somebody else did. The full transcript of his original judgement is here, and the PDF of the Supreme Court of Appeal’s judgement is here. The SCA’s judgement is unravelling after less than a week. The more people read these pompous but empty and self-contradictory texts, the quicker this unravelling will run its course. Sad to relate, some comrades have held back from fully supporting Schabir. But others who have a recollection of unity-in-action are inclined to support this comrade to the hilt, and as much as or even more than if it was one of their own who was under attack. The remarkable thing about the experience of unity-in-action between individual bourgeois and partisans of the proletariat is that very strong and emotional personal bonds are formed. It is therefore deeply offensive to contemplate the SCA judges patronising Schabir Shaik with a lecture on struggle values. It is impossible to forget if you have shared danger and trusted people with your life. These bourgeois freedom fighters taught the communists something about humanity. It is impossible to unlearn the lesson that an open and generous bourgeois is infinitely preferable to a faux-Marxist closet-bourgeois pretender, for example. Which brings us to Zola Skweyiya. This legal gent has consistently managed to ingratiate himself with the ANC leadership and at the same time to hold himself out as “progressive” while quietly growing rich. His announcements as a minister have been exquisitely timed over the years to catch attention just when people had begun to suspect that he was doing very little for the poor people whose welfare has been under his charge. His announced support of the “BIG” this week, just at the moment when he was found “in breach of executive ethics” by the Public Protector, Lawrence Mushwana (see article linked below), is a case in point. The “breach of ethics” was the minor charge. The major charge of trading for his own account (the same charge that Jan van Riebeeck was let off from by the bourgeois Regents of the United Netherlands in 1651) was shuffled out of sight. So Comrade Zola lives on to face his nemesis some other day. Another legal gent who had a very long spell in favour is Ngoako Ramatlhodi. But the court of King Thabo, like any other court, is a fickle and risky place. Who gets protected and who gets hung out to dry? It’s impossible to tell from one day to the next. Just one unkind, whispered word from a jealous colleague can tip you into the pit forever. Ramatlhodi is now being given the full Hollywood treatment, with the active connivance of the Mail and Guardian’s embedded “Scorpions report” section (see linked article). For those with eyes to see, the falseness of the case is clear in the manner of its presentation. Why the need to wear the person down with leaks and innuendos, if there is a plain case to answer? It is not a mistake. The niggling, harassing approach of the Scorpions/NPA is a substitute for a proper case, and therefore is certain evidence of the absence of a real case. The aim is to destroy the person before he gets to court, so that the case itself is an afterthought, an anti-climax, or if possible does not take place at all, if the victim is already thoroughly broken. The enemy’s job is to find your weakest flank and to attack at that point. You are almost never going to have to defend the front you would prefer to defend. Both Schabir Shaik and Ngoako Ramatlhodi must be defended by the proletarian democracy with the utmost vigour. The Niemöller lesson must apply. When they come for the other guy you must defend him, because if you don’t they may come for you next. This applies even, or especially, if the other guy kicks with a different foot. There is no point in a half-hearted defence. There used to be a Trotskyist groupuscule in London whose wonderful logo featured a huge blacksmith wielding a hammer with the slogan: “If you don’t hit it, it won’t fall”. Now is the time to hit the Squires/SCA rulings and spring Schabir while the gross injustice of his conviction is still fresh in people’s minds. Remember, he got fifteen years, is banned from directorships, and suffered asset seizures of at least R33 million. All that for doing nothing more than the networking that all capitalists do, all the time. See previous CU posts for more on this. There is no doubt that capitalism is corrupt. Capitalist morality is a contradiction in terms. The only available morality is revolutionary morality. Picking off individual capitalists for doing what they all do is not going to change capitalism for the better. It is only going to create an arbitrary and uncontrolled power in the land and build a basis for fascism, which is capitalism supported by coercion, not consent. The other two linked documents are PUDEMO Swaziland President Mario Masuku’s statement on Friday, and the YCL discussion document on gender. You got them here. Click on these links: Mixed Signals, Judge Hilary Squires, letter, Weekender (468 words) Appeal court errs in Shaik judgment, Brown and Mde, Weekender (1275 words) Mushwana letting ANC petticoat show, Kevin OGrady, Weekender (726 words) Scorpion smear on Ramatlhodi, Matuma Letsoalo, Mail and Guardian (587 words) Moment of decisiveness, Mario Masuku, PUDEMO (2612 words) YCL discussion document on Gender (8593 words)