When justice is a joke and parliament is full of clowns it's not funny, it's nauseating

The demise of apartheid did not merely signify the end of oppression but the birth of a new ethos where the needs of the masses would be uppermost

08 September 2024 - 00:00

Audiences would often burst out laughing when at the end of A Fish Called Wanda, the 80s comedy film, credits would reveal that Otto, one of the gang of diamond thieves played by Kevin Kline, had later fled to apartheid South Africa where he became minister of justice. It was hilarious, but a more serious point was being made: justice and apartheid were a contradiction that could not exist side by side, and the system had basically become a laughing stock. Mockery was therefore an effective weapon against it...

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