Judge’s inflammatory remarks
– about foreigners seeking asylum: appeal court not impressed IT’S not every day that you read an appeal decision commenting on the way a trial court handled a matter using words like these: ‘It is a matter of grave concern when fundamental rules of litigation are so...
Opening of new SCA court:
why it’s not ok that the media was barred AN historic event: the first sitting in the Supreme Court of Appeal’s brand new main court attended by the lords and ladies of the law not to mention South Africa’s leading justice officials. So what was I doing in a marquee...
Here’s something we could do …
RAPISTS acquitted because of some technical glitsch in court. Sexual predators who will spend far less time than they should in jail because the judge or magistrate felt an incomprehensible sympathy with the perpetrator. We hear about cases like this week after week...
Court messes up so rapist’s sentence halved
I’VE just read a rape appeal judgment that has left me fuming. It’s yet another case in which the rapist got off with less than he deserves because of a technical hitch or the misplaced sympathy of a judicial officer. It convinces me that we need a plan; something...
Blue cranes at Genadendal
This group of four blue cranes against the mountains caught my eye. I could have watched them the whole day.
Dam Dies II
A desert where a dam used to be …. Early Sunday morning. The tractor arrives where the dam used to be bringing driver Geelbooi Maseu and his friend Petrus Zenzile who works on a sewerage clearing team during the week. Maseu connects the tank on the tractor to...
Feasting when the dam dies
WHEN the town dam dies, there’s always a feast. It’s happened twice during the time I’ve been living in this little Free State dorp and I’m learning the rituals. At its fullest the dam, just outside the town gates, is more than six kilometres in circumference. Several...
Dam Dies I
This used to be a town dam, with water as far as you could see. Now there’s nothing except a dark stain in the centre where the last water dried into mud shards. Careless owners of cattle and horses have left their animals to graze next to the dry dam and they are...
Journalists’ patron plant is blooming …
Blooming in the veld right now is Harveya purpurea, aka the ink plant (because the flowers turn an inky black colour if they are bruised). More sceptical members of the public might say that there is another reason for this to be the patron plant of journalists: it’s...