Post by cjm on Apr 30, 2019 6:29:33 GMT
Ek dink dit word goed opgesom:
Chris Marnewick SC
2019-04-10 at 09:20
I'm trying my best to make sense of all of this. Dr D is railing against apartheid. I get that. No one here, as far as I can see, is defending apartheid or its abuses and crimes. So far so good.
But it seems to me an impermissible leap in logic to say that because apartheid was bad, Tsafendas was not legally insane but a tragic Greek hero masquerading as a madman.
Two points: Justice Beyers was not an apartheid apologist - and Justice JT van Wyk certainly was. Beyers was known on circuit to disappear from the formal dinners arranged for him and his entourage to go and sit on the floor in the kitchen to chat with the brown people working there. As an aside, on at least one occasion he heard an opposed urgent application on a Satruday morning while at Graaff's Pool - counsel were Douglas Shaw QC from Durban and Lourens Muller SC of the Cape Bar. Beyers was not a man who dance to someone else's tune.
Secondly, the prison warder who was my source for my book about the goings on on death row told me many things about Tsafendas which I cannot disclose here. The fact is, although Tsafendas was an avid reader of the newspapers, he was not in touch with reality. (Although incarceration in that place could drive even the most balanced of us insane, I readily concede.)
And this really is the point, isn't it? Was Tsafendas insane according to the McNaghten test - as Gustaf points out?
That said, there are many unanswered questions about how Tsafendas got a job in Parliament when there was, and still is, no rational explanation as to how he got into the country in the first place, and then THAT job. The reason he gave to my source while on death row is disclosed in my book. But that sounds so farfethched than it canot possibly be true. Or can it?
I don't mind Dr D writing his book - but I do mind his attacking those who disagree with his conclusions. Knowledge only advances if the debate is impersonal and objective.
2019-04-10 at 09:20
I'm trying my best to make sense of all of this. Dr D is railing against apartheid. I get that. No one here, as far as I can see, is defending apartheid or its abuses and crimes. So far so good.
But it seems to me an impermissible leap in logic to say that because apartheid was bad, Tsafendas was not legally insane but a tragic Greek hero masquerading as a madman.
Two points: Justice Beyers was not an apartheid apologist - and Justice JT van Wyk certainly was. Beyers was known on circuit to disappear from the formal dinners arranged for him and his entourage to go and sit on the floor in the kitchen to chat with the brown people working there. As an aside, on at least one occasion he heard an opposed urgent application on a Satruday morning while at Graaff's Pool - counsel were Douglas Shaw QC from Durban and Lourens Muller SC of the Cape Bar. Beyers was not a man who dance to someone else's tune.
Secondly, the prison warder who was my source for my book about the goings on on death row told me many things about Tsafendas which I cannot disclose here. The fact is, although Tsafendas was an avid reader of the newspapers, he was not in touch with reality. (Although incarceration in that place could drive even the most balanced of us insane, I readily concede.)
And this really is the point, isn't it? Was Tsafendas insane according to the McNaghten test - as Gustaf points out?
That said, there are many unanswered questions about how Tsafendas got a job in Parliament when there was, and still is, no rational explanation as to how he got into the country in the first place, and then THAT job. The reason he gave to my source while on death row is disclosed in my book. But that sounds so farfethched than it canot possibly be true. Or can it?
I don't mind Dr D writing his book - but I do mind his attacking those who disagree with his conclusions. Knowledge only advances if the debate is impersonal and objective.