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83 S. African L.J. 16 (1966)
The Permanence of the Temporary - An Examination of the 90- and 180-Day Detention Laws

handle is hein.journals/soaf83 and id is 34 raw text is: THE PERMANENCE OF THE TEMPORARY - AN EXAMINATION OF THE 90- AND 180-DAY DETENTION LAWS 'And we should recognise that the proper basis of our security is in good administration rather than in fear of legal penalties.' These words stand out in the speech of Diodotus' against the proposal to put to death all male Mytilenians as a punishment for their revolt against Athens. Thucydides, who records them in The Peloponnesian War, clearly subscribes to the sentiment expressed by Diodotus and, in doing so, demonstrates the unerring sense for fundamentals and ultimate causes which is manifested throughout his great work. The words spoken by Diodotus have an uncomfortable relevance for our own times and invite the reader to think out the issues of the present right down to fundamental bedrock. It is with the same attitude of mind that jurists ought to approach the ' security ' legislation of recent years in the Republic. Of course, there are some who would deny lawyers and legal writers the right to approach these measures at all except for the limited purpose of statutory interpretation. This narrow view of the function of the lawyer, practising or acade- mic, may have been tenable in Austin's time but hardly in. the twentieth century. It is today well understood that law is not a phenomenon which can be studied in isolation; that it is both neces- sary and desirable to study a law with reference to its purpose, its effect and its moral, social and political implications. A study of this kind is the special, but not exclusive, function of the academic lawyer, who, not being involved in the heat of the conflict, is more likely to see the problem in terms of its essentials and to seek ultimate rather than expedient solutions. Again, there are those who condemn university 'interference' in the contentious issues of the day. Fortunately enlightened contemporary opinion does not relegate the academic to the life of a stylite who, from the height of his pillar, may survey with unconcern the agonies of life if, indeed, he troubles to survey them at all. Sir Walter Moberly, in The Crisis in the University, rejects as a sham the neutrality of the liberal tradition of education. He. sees the universities as the ' inheritors of the Greek traditions of candid and intrepid thinking about the fundamental issues involved in the life of the individual and of the community - and of the Greek principle that the unexamined life is no life for man ,2 In striking language, Y Gasset has similarly urged the univer- sity ' to be in the midst of real life, and saturated with it '.: Of course it is understood that the academic will rise above the thinking and vision of the man in the street; that he will have overthrown 1 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (Penguin ed.), p. 189. 2 W. Moberly, The Crisis in the University (SCM Press, Ltd., 1949), p. 108. Jos6 Ortega Y Gasser, Mission of the University (Routledge & Keegan Paul, Ltd., 1952), p. 76.

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