A Culture Mad

Dear ANC

You are living the we..., I mean, the dream.

Everything that is upstuffable you have stuffed up. Cum laude. It's wearying to list what that is and it would take too long. I'm sure that you yourselves have lost track. One way is to ask what still works in South Africa. Nothing? See what I mean about the list?

No Roman orgy ever lasted this long, nor were so many, er, corporeally ministered to. (Apologies. After my recent suspension, without pay - unlike some of your heroic cadres - by Twitter, one needs to swathe the truth in many layers of fluff).

Yet you survive, grow fatter (if that's possible), and thrive. Many scammers and low-polling political parties worldwide would kill for your secret. It has to be one of the modern wonders of the world. The EFF must be biting their lips in envy, though they're not doing too badly as a sort of distant also-ran.

You were a liberation movement. You have, in recent times, liberated us from commonsense, truth, decency. No need to quote examples. Is there a single prominent member of your movement that is not under a cloud of one kind or another? Serious question and asking for my grandson.

You do, however, have a following as loyal as the crowd who followed the first lemming into blissful oblivion. People are waking up to what your long-running, lavatorial burlesque means for South Africa. Unfortunately, many will vote for you in haste and protest against your greed, incompetence and indifference at leisure. Is not this the tried and trusted South African way? I think that there will be a great awakening one day, when we are fighting one another for the contents of dirt bins, among crumbling statues and ruined smart cities. It will be a tad late.

And of course, democracy allows one to make ruinous choices. When that democracy operates only at the shallowest level, then correcting for those choices is almost impossible. I'm not suggesting that this is the case in South Africa. I'm merely saying it. We are currently, like those participants in the Roman orgies, truly ministered to.

If we had opposition parties just a little more concerned about this country than about ego, power and all the delectable stuff that goes alongside, we'd have a fighting chance. Perhaps this is unfair and unduly negative. I hope so. 

Historians, viewing the smoking, decaying remains of what was once a country of promise, will probably ask the profound, philosophical question;

"What the hell was wrong with these people?

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad...

(Auden: September 1st, 1939)

Yours in the struggle to find the hope that springs eternal.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

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