Public life is littered with men and women so stupid, and so mendacious, that the mean national IQ has dropped below zero: Iqbal Surve Gwede Mantashe Fikile Mbalula Dali Mpofu the ingrate Zuma twins Helen Zille, and this is to name only a few, all of whom are trailed by decrepit ass-creeping troll armies who create their own imbecile vortex, debasing anything that remains of the exuberant discourse that followed the democratic transition some decades ago. Academic and political discourse mimics the American left/right dialectic, except without the urgency or ten-dollar-a-word opinion pieces.

Trust in the elite ruling class has evaporated-vaccination hesitancy is just the latest indication that even super-tame middle- and upper-class South Africans are no longer so compliant, even when compliancy serves their own interests. (His party, the conservative ActionSA, are looking to be a smash hit in these elections.) More importantly, they take place in a denuded political marketplace, where the Democratic Alliance is reduced to aping the American culture wars the Economic Freedom Fighters are nothing more than a racketeering outfit masquerading as a political party and Herman Mashaba can’t fill out a form on time, although he can spew xenophobic rhetoric like the Trump-lite he aspires to be.

They take place as the governing ANC explodes into a bloody mist before our eyes, with the slowest-acting president in the party’s history flailing away at some cases of corruption while energetically scrunching up his eyes so he can’t see how the employees in his own office are stealing pencils and siphoning the fuel out of his VIP BMW retinue. They take place in the dark, as the power grid fails around us, while almost every single state-owned enterprise makes the likes of Facebook look like a well-run, benevolent orphanage. (We’ll leave the pathetic R350 grant unmentioned.) These elections take place in the uncanny valley between third and fourth Covid waves, in an economy smashed by the interminable lockdowns that have visited brutality on poorer South Africans without any commensurately humane social assistance. This, if you were wondering, is the essence of a gangster state-taxpaying citizens keep their own assassins on retainer. Meanwhile, one of Deokaran’s suspected murderers sits in jail drawing a salary from the KZN provincial government. The looting, South Africa’s version of a 4IR initiative, has likely leached at least R15-billion from the fiscus. They take place following the assassination of whistleblower Babita Deokaran, who appears to have been murdered for her role in exposing Covid-19 tender corruption in Gauteng. The drama was ostensibly sparked by the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma for contempt of court-happily, he is now enjoying “medical parole” due to what appears to be a nudge-nudge wink-wink arrangement between the former National Commissioner of Correctional Services, Arthur Fraser, and President Ramaphosa. But context is important, and in this case, the context is not kind.Īfter all, these elections take place in the shadow of a gangster insurrection that tore apart two provinces over the course of July. This is, of course, not a polite observation in a country where thousands died for the right to vote.

Someone is already looting that corpse