“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within ... For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.”

This Taylor Caldwell quote, controversially attributed to Cicero, Mark Antony’s nemesis, did the rounds among governing party members this weekend as the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) was meeting to discuss how to deal with corruption. Both dominant factions in the party would probably find the quote apt for these times...

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