Best Said By A Third World Politician

A Zimbabwe politician was quoted as saying that children should study the US election event closely because it shows that election fraud is not only a third world phenomenon. To illustrate the point, he made the following comments:

"Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation’s secret police (the CIA).

Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on some old colonial holdover from the nation’s pre-democracy past (the electoral college).

Imagine that the self-declared winner’s ‘victory’ turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother!

Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district heavily favoring the self-declared winner’s opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate.

Imagine that members of that nation’s most despised caste, fearing for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner’s candidacy.

Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner’s brother.

Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that the self-declared winner’s ‘lead’ was only 327 votes. Fewer, certainly, than the vote counting machines’ margin of error.

Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district.

Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation and actually led the nation in executions.

Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation.

None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything other than the self-declared winner’s will-to-power. All of us, I imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was another sad tale of pitiful pre- or anti-democracy peoples in some strange, faraway elsewhere."

Jeffrey Benzien granted amnesty

Issued by: TRC http://www.polity.org.za/govdocs/pr/1999/pr0217c.html

Former senior member of the SAP Anti-Terrorist Unit, Jeffrey Theodore Benzien, was today granted amnesty by the Amnesty Committee of the TRC for the killing of popular ANC Cape Town activist, Ashley Kriel, who was gunned down at his home in Athlone on 15th July 1987.

Benzien who presently holds position of captain at the Airwing of the South African Police Services in Cape Town, was also granted amnesty for the use of his "favourite" torture method, known as the "Wet Bag Method" during the torture and interrogation of a number of political activists, including a leading ANC MP, Tony Yengeni.

He was granted amnesty for the severe torture and assault on Ashley Forbes on 16th April 1986 at the Culemborg Police Station. Forbes suffered a damaged eardrum. He was granted for the torture of Bongani Jonas whom he denied medical attention after being seriously wounded in a shooting, and instead carried on interrogating while he laid on the floor wringing in pain.

He was granted for the torture of Peter Jacobs on whom he administered his "Wet Bag" method and the electric shock method, continuously for more than 5 hours during interrogation. And also for Nico Pedro who was arrested near Lesotho on 15th August 1987 and severely assaulted and tortured, almost "to the verge of death".

He was also granted amnesty for assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm on Gary Kruser, whom he tortured and severely assaulted while trying to get information out of him.

Benzien’s Wet Bag method which was widely publicised when he displayed it during a public hearing, entails making the suspect to lie on the ground on his stomach, with his hands handcuffed behind his back. he would then sit on the small of the suspects back and pull over his head a wet cloth bag, twisting it tightly around the suspects neck, cutting off the air supply to the victim.

Benzien bragged during his hearing, saying that his method was so effective that he invariably got the desired results within a matter of thirty minutes.

He was also granted amnesty for committing perjury in the trial of Gary Kruser and at the inquest proceedings on Ashley Kriel’s death.

For more info contact TRC Media Director MDU LEMBEDE on 082 4588464

See also:

http://www.polity.org.za/govdocs/commissions/1998/trc/ http://www.polity.org.za/govdocs/commissions/1998/trc/2chap3.htm
http://www.africanreviewofbooks.com/100best/100bestsamples/krog.html