SOMETIMES it seems that we are all living in cloud cuckoo land. And not just in this country but the world over. Some of the happenings in recent months would fit well in a Monty Python movie.
As Peter-Dirk Uys is fond of saying – he loves the government because they write the best scripts.
In Dubai a 24-year-old Norwegian girl was raped by a colleague. Marte Dalelv did what any other woman in a similar situation would do – she reported the sexual assault to the police.
In Dubai that is really the wrong move. Marte was arrested and charged with having sex outside of marriage. She was found guilty and sentenced to 16 months in a Dubai prison.
A public outcry around the world resulted in the Dubai judiciary doing an about turn and then very patronisingly “pardoned” her and returned her passport.
Where is the logic in that? The bottom line here is Dubai’s attitude to women.
Sexism is alive and well in the majority of countries but, like apartheid, it is not written into the statute books as it is in Dubai.
Paediatric oncologist Cyril Karabus had a taste of UAE justice when he was detained for nine months, having been found guilty in absentia of manslaughter and of falsifying documents. The prison sentence was for the death of a three-year-old in 2003. The Yemenite child died of leukaemia when she was his patient when he was working in Abu Dhabi.
Although he proved his innocence on numerous occasions the authorities played a cat and mouse game of cancelled court dates, lost passport and delays of weeks and months for no particular reason but that they could.
Perhaps there are countries that are best avoided because their human rights records indicates that they do not deserve our support of their tourist industry or the benefit of our knowledge.
Yesterday the New Dehli police proved that nowhere is safe from the long arm of the police, not even the grave.
The former national cricket captain, Hansie Cronje, disgraced for his role in an Indian match fixing scandal, has been charged by the New Dehli police. Hansie has been dead for 11 years. The late Cronje has been charged along with six bookmakers who are alleged to have bribed Cronje to throw international games during South Africa’s tour to India in 2000.
Cronje will no doubt be found guilty. Will the New Dehli police send his ghost to jail?
And here in Cloud Cuckooland our president has publically chastised international relations adviser, Lindiwe Zulu, for her comments on Zimbabwe, which is what she is employed to do.
The president had little to say about the abuse, defamation and crimen injuria hurled at her by the tyrannical Robert Mugabe.
To call someone a “stupid, idiotic street woman” is scurrilous in the extreme and Mugabe should be made aware that South Africans are not amused.
“Street woman” to many people means a prostitute, and yet our president says nothing in her defence.
Why is it that this government keeps on getting into bed with despots, tyrants and crooks?
