WHAT should we make of the arms deal amnesty debate? My former university professor, Tony Leon, and Garth van Onselen assailed the idea this week because it would deny the public its constitutional right to justice. “If the ANC commits corruption on a big enough scale, all it needs is to admit it, and everything will be forgiven.” And where would you stop, they ask. To equate the amnesty argument underlying the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to a corrupt arms deal under a democratically elected government is logically flawed, they argue .

Amnesty for corrupt politicians cannot really be equated with amnesty given to people who struggled for democracy. I think it slipped their attention that amnesty was not given to the good struggle guys only but, for the most part, to the bad guys too. But I quibble, their main point is that now that we are a constitutional democracy we should respect the rule of law.

Now we will all recall that the Azanian People’s Organi sation (Azapo) and the Biko family argued against amnesty and called for their right to justice by appealing to the same rule of law that Leon and Van Onselen celebrate. They lost, of course, because of the political emphasis given to reconciliation. My question is whether Leon and Van Onselen would have supported Azapo and the Biko families or whether they would have described them as vengeful and anti democratic. Your guess is as good as mine but I certainly don’t remember them hollering for the rule of law.

What the Azapo and Biko family case proved was that application of the rule of law is always contextual, then as now.

P.S.

PROF Barney Pityana’s attacks on Jacob Zuma come across as gratuitous, unwarranted and uppity. Or let’s put it this way, there is no way of avoiding that interpretation by the people who voted for Zuma at a properly constituted ANC conference in Polokwane. And to argue that Zuma is not a good leader because he is a flip-flopper raises another question.

Who are the better leaders — those who remain wedded to views such as HIV does not cause AIDS and that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq despite evidence to the contrary, or those who are willing to change their positions in the light of available evidence? It may interest Pityana that one of the greatest flip-floppers of the 20th century was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By so doing he invented the New Deal and changed the course of history.

With acknowledgements to Xolela Mangcu and Business Day.