Books Column: Of fake tribes, meme-pilled billionaires, and a well-deserved chapeau — how Daily Maverick sustains the world

This evening, weak and weary as always when the deadline to file a column draws near, I have two names knocking around in my mind.

If you've heard of one, the likelihood is that you've not heard of the other.

They both trade in binaries, but only one of these binaries is real. The other amounts to an act of a man on the run. 

The man on the run plays tough. The other man, who has finally stopped running (well, we'll see), actually is tough — tempered-by-years-as-a-journalist tough. (Is it possible to find someone tougher than a seasoned journalist? In my experience — no.)

Namely, I'm thinking of Nate Silver and Branko Brkic.

If you're reading this column and don't know the second name, Branko Brkic — well, bless you. It's almost excusable. The founder of this very publication, and its Editor-in-Chief for fifteen years, Branko has always put his staff's bylines before his own. But make no mistake: it's Branko's unique internal dynamo that has been the source of power underwriting every minute of Daily Maverick's existence to date. Last month, he announced he was stepping aside as EIC. All one can do is doff one's cap. Chapeau, Branko, and thank you for the privilege of being associated with your publication.

Meanwhile, if you don't know the first name, Nate Silver, it's quite excusable. He's an American pollster who has predicted several elections correctly. His feats have brought him, to borrow a phrase of Lauren Beukes', a mild case of the fames, and helped him score book deals. These book deals, in turn, ensure he gets my attention, lucky bloke.

Silver's latest, out now, is graced with the bathetic title, On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything. Ho-hum. In it — binary alert! — Silver divides the world into two camps, the Village and the River. Those who live their lives by embracing risk and speculation are assigned to the River camp. (Yes, it's a poker reference.) Those who subscribe to the idea of progress via liberal politics are the Villagers. (Yes, the name amounts to condescension for its own sake.)

So far, so C-minus. The River folk, naturally — among whom Silver counts himself — are the cool crowd, the galaxy brains and rakish ne'er-do-wells whose knavery is marked by acts of individualistic folly that still redound to society's benefit, by somehow helping us hone our collective instincts. The Villagers, by contrast, are living in a ghost town, in which the structures of 20th century institutions are present, but have lost much of their animating force.

Silver's binary paradigm is a canard, of course: On the Edge explains nothing about the world, but instead is the book of a man trying to justify his own predispositions, inventing fake tribes that bear no relation to reality. Certain people in Silver's fake tribe have forced him on the run — think meme-pilled billionaires who comment in provocation of pogroms against immigrants — and this book is his leap for salvation.

Now, compare Silver's facile, binary-hawking grift with Branko's newspaper-publishing hard graft.

For graft Branko and the DM journos do, day in and day out, pushing the limits of a different binary — one that is decidedly real, and where the actual fight for the future of our world lies.

I have in my study a copy of We Have a Game Changer, the book that charts Daily Maverick's first ten years. Flipping through it, one is struck by its status as a reference tool: each page indexes and points to a much vaster, living archive of our recent life and times, thousands of stories held in the databases of Daily Maverick online.

I have thought about the boundary lines of this archive, and what they balloon up against as new stories are filed and published, in service of Daily Maverick's project of facing reality. The word that I keep coming back to is: shame.

The binary that Branko and his team seek, through their tireless work, to sustain, is one in which the shameless find themselves opposed by those who still have the capacity for shame. The DM conducts litmus tests, daily, for traces of shame in our society, and because the relentless and uncompromising nature of these tests is now well-known, fifteen years later – they’re a bedrock fact of South African life – the shameless here are held somewhat at bay. They do not (yet) have complete run of the place.

But this is in fact how the whole world works: those who can be shamed undermine the efforts of the shameless. It’s got nothing to do with rivers and villages. At present, everywhere, the shameless are in the ascendant, bludgeoning us with their outrages; should the binary collapse, Villagers and Riverians will be buried side-by-side.


Let's hear it, then, for Branko and the DM team, whose acts of vigilance at the boundaries of shame long preceded Silver and his made-up Riverians, and constitute a true art of risking everything. For confronting South Africa and the world as it is, rather than inventing a fake paradigm as a dodge, the DM makes South Africa and the world a better place. We owe Branko and his crew a debt of gratitude. And, indeed, our money: become an Insider today. Certainly there’s no shame in that. DM