Extract
“How To Turn A Struggling But Hopeful Country Into A Failed State” is a long read. If you don’t have time for the whole thing, just skim the EFF’s election manifesto. But if you do read it, you’ll discover that on Wednesday night, Tanzania was following Chapter 1 to the letter when it detained veteran South African journalist Angela Quintal.
In that chapter, you’ll read about the two essential things every state needs to do if it really, truly wants to slide from mediocrity into lower-middle wretchedness before starting its final plunge into failure. And you’ll see that Tanzania is putting all the basics in place to achieve just that.
The first non-negotiable is that the would-be failed state needs to be so terrified of gay people that it has legalised discrimination against them. This level of homophobia shows that you are both maniacally patriarchal and fantastically stupid, both essential if you are going to fail properly.