GARETH VAN ONSELEN: The banality of the ANC’s evil
Indifference, when acute and well set, is a greater crime than theft — it is to bypass the state and attack the people directly
Evil is a word one keeps in reserve. These days, there aren’t many words you can say that about. Most, through overuse, have had the life sucked out of them. Certainly, the standard bearers for South African moral decay — "corruption", "failure", "bankrupt", "broken", "maladministration", "loss", "greed", "destruction", "theft" and many others — are meaningful only insofar as they allude to a problem. Even "crisis", the collective noun for profound decline, is somewhat denuded of its worth. These ideas are flags really. We pin them to problems, merely to categorise and demonstrate we are still able to distinguish right from wrong. But, such is the scale, nature and range of ever-escalating issues that underpin our collective condition, we do not dwell on them individually or in any meaningful way. Rather, we experience them all generally, as part of a pervasive sense of deterioration. "Evil", however, remains intact. It is one of only a few words yet to be applied to the ANC. And fo...
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