GARETH VAN ONSELEN: SA’s prevailing and potent political idiocy
Our world is now the ANC’s world — a sad, obscure and obtuse little planet, intellectually dead and in which the best we can do is hope those with power will do just enough to avoid junk status
It is now common cause, to the degree that it has become a truism, that our politics is generally manifestly stupid. That is a blunt description, but one demanded by the illusion that it is anything otherwise. It is populated by many out-and-out idiots. Otherwise, by those too mediocre to distinguish insight or original thought from dogmatic cliché or slogan.
There is the odd exception, as with any generalisation — a handful perhaps, of genuine intellectuals. They are about as welcome as someone quarantined with a dread disease. Isolated, abused, alienated and on the margins, their effect is as resented as it is negligible...
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