Realpolitik

Dear Fellow South Africans 

Some years ago, I interviewed a young woman who had started a feeding scheme at her school. The scheme still feeds over a hundred needy schoolchildren.

Many of our politicians also started exclusive feeding schemes. It's not clear how many they feed. They eat well. The rest of us are, in the words of Hamlet, promise fed. 

King Lear, in the storm, speaking of the 'naked wretches':

  Oh, I have ta'en 

  Too little care of this! Take  physic, pomp

  Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, 

  That thou mayst shake the superflux to them

  And show the heavens more just

But our politicians don't earn enough to have a King Lear moment. According to some reports. Anyway, Shakespeare's sentiments are probably unAfrican.

And all this stuff about compassion and service is too simplistic. The burdens of politics and government are far more complex. It's a silly comparison: a humble, unsophisticated girl feeding over a hundred children. That's not realpolitik. 

Yours in the struggle to be realistic.

Richard