All the world's a stage
GARETH VAN ONSELEN: SA’s political pageantry ...
It borders on the absurd. It is often full of sound and fury, but sorely lacking in substance
We are going to boo [deputy president Cyril] Ramaphosa back and it won’t be nice," ANC Youth League president Collen Maine said recently, in response to a Cosatu decision to deny President Jacob Zuma a May Day platform. It’s not the kind of sentiment one would earmark for the Museum of Mature Political Commentary but, then, so few are these days. SA seems to operate more like a theatre than a Socratic forum and, for the most part, the main production is a farce. The old adage has it that actions speak louder than words. It is true of a great deal of our politics. In societies with low literacy rates and weak education systems, visual images and physical action take on disproportionate meaning in comparison with the abstract appeal of ideas and arguments that are the hallmarks of more sophisticated modern democracies.One of the reasons so much SA outrage revolves around art and cartoons, for example, is that these transcend the language barrier and, thus, the written word. Other fact...
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