um, well it's more that Geoffrey Robertson is retelling you the story from his perspective, so anything he says on any of the other characters is coloured firstly by the way he presents them - like if he says they're stuck up - and then by how he manipulates responders to sort of, pass our own opinions.
Yeah so i'm kinda slow and haven't done the Show Trials OR the Prisoner of Venda,
but like in Michael X, Robertson does this thing with the framing of Michael (the guy who's on death row) where he selectively describes certain details - like the hardships of being on death row, waiting to die, being locked up 23-24 hours a day, no human contact except with guards, etc - to make us sympathise with him and it works cos somehow we forget that he killed a guy and probs deserves to be in jail.
Oh and yeah, if Robertson frames a character as stuck up (like Judge Argyle in the Trials of Oz) it makes us like disregard everything that character says because we're thinking 'psssh, that guy's an idiot', so maybe that's kind of like the government thingy you're talking about? They don't really get a say, it's implied.
He's mighty clever that Roberston...