Monday, 10 September 2007

Zille detained

Now and then I get an uneasy feeling, like I get a glimpse of something that should set off warning bells, but then I look around, and either no one else has noticed, or they just don't care. Like one of those movies where you're watching and things slip quickly into a precarious situation. Perhaps it's just a healthy dose of paranoia or a tendency for the dramatic; even so, sometimes I think we don't join the dots where maybe we should. I'll do another post on this soon, taking a completely different direction...

Hearing about what happened to Helen Zille yesterday concerned me. She was arrested and detained for an apparently legal and peaceful march. Read the details here and here. Two other things sprung to my mind: the farewell to the deputy minister of health, which i commented on here. Also the whole McBride incident (which is a whole other story).

In my mind, there are three probable explanations of yesterdays activities: 1- it was just an embarrassing bungle on the part of the police. Hindsight is 20/20 they say, and perhaps under the circumstances, they just thought they did what they should. 2- Some officer felt his authority challenged, and his ego got damaged and so he acted stupidly/rashly. 3- this was a calculated (political) move from the powers that be, in which case we'll probably never find this out. There are other possible scenarios, but from what I've heard these explain things the best to me. With my view on the deputy minister's dismissal, you can probably guess which explanation I'm currently leaning on! I do, however, sincerely hope I'm wrong.

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