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CHRIS ROPER: Of Jessie Duarte and the rewriting of history
Many of the obituaries for ANC stalwart Jessie Duarte omitted any negative facts about her. It’s a rewriting of history by omission — though admittedly less pernicious than recasting the past to suit an individual or ideological agenda
There’s an argument to be made that one of the great things about being South African is that there really is no such thing. As a very young agglomeration of people and cultures that we’ve chosen to call a nation, our founding myths are mostly very new, and as such haven’t had time to become an unconscious part of who we are.
And it looks like those founding myths — the rainbow nation, the wise party of the struggle, a country that can avoid the clichés of post-colonialism, and so on — have run out of time to take hold. They have all been decisively obliterated by years of misrule, incompetence and corruption. ..
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