Coup or no coup?

A COUP’S fundamental aim is to grab power, not usually to restore order in a despotic and captured country.

The fact that there was enormous restraint by the Zimbabwean army, with a clear mission to end an undoubtedly disastrous tyranny and with a promise to restore political power to the major political party leaders, is notable.

From another perspective, the legal one, a common test for a person’s action is whether “the reasonable man or woman would have acted in the particular manner given the circumstances”.

If I am only half reasonable, I would vote the army’s action eminently reasonable.

In our own country, there are too many parallels with the situation as it was until the “coup” with Zimbabwe – a president widely judged to be self-serving and destructive to the detriment of his people, apparently set on establishing a dynasty.

Many reasonable people in South Africa have already shouted for the removal of the president, so there seems to be an abundance of “reasonable people” here. Will the vice-president be sacked? If so, then the parallel is almost complete and that this parallel suggests many interesting future pathways for events to develop here in South Africa, especially with this interesting precedent, should be patently obvious. Ben Smit Melkbosstrand