In his production “Waiting for the Sibyl”, the artist William Kentridge reflects on the Cumaean Sibyl, who wrote fates on oak leaves. A swirling wind scattered them, blurring destinies — an image echoed in Dante’s “Paradiso” as pages forming his book.
We live in a noisy and boundaryless world. Anything can be said or done. Everything is happening at once and at breakneck speed.
Would that we knew the world’s fate at this fraught moment. Would that we could pick the right oak leaf. But like the leaves blowing in the wind, defining the future seems a fool’s errand now. The modern-day Sibyl is creating chaos with the answers.
Daily, we witness megalomaniacs upending the world. Because they can. In this world, the strong are not constrained by the rules and the weak are dispensed with — whether in Africa or Palestine.
Lies are served up as truth.
At any moment there seem to be two alternative narratives. The one is the truth, that which is immutable and fact-based and which needs no audience. The other is what the chess grandmaster, writer and political activist Garry Kasparov calls “modern propaganda”, or in plain language, lies. Kasparov says, “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
The lies foment and, like volcanic lava, spew forth fire and hot hell. It is the outcome of the boundaryless world. Human connection has become transient and superficial; we are all distracted on monkey bars, often unable to hold a thought until the algorithm sends us somewhere else.
In the midst of all this is a world in which many have been left behind, alienated from the very democratic institutions that are meant to protect them and advance their rights. The populism this has spawned is evident in many countries. The likes of Donald Trump, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and other pretenders like Nigel Farage in Britain, Marine Le Pen in France and Alice Weidel in Germany understand the grievances of ordinary people only too well.
And so the politics of the day is complex, with each day bringing some fresh hell stoked by lies in Washington. As the world's superpower seems to be sleepwalking into authoritarianism, no one is untouched by Trump, who, like a mad king, rules by fiat.
In South Africa, this has created complications of its own, partly because of the genocide case against Israel brought before the International Court of Justice and our Expropriation Act.
With the African Growth and Opportunity Act up for negotiation and no South African ambassador in Washington, we seem to be up the creek without a paddle. While the relationship with the US is crucial, one does wonder how any South African ambassador will navigate the incoherence and what Hillary Clinton, in her recent essay for The New York Times, called the “dumb power” of the Trump administration. She called her country “feeble and friendless”, and whatever one might think of the former secretary of state, it is hard to argue with the description.
A lack of nimbleness
South Africa is not “future fit”, unfortunately, and so the nimbleness we need to navigate this extraordinary new world is missing. We have spent the Zuma years caught up in State Capture and nepotism while denuding every institution that is needed to make things work. Only last week, we heard about the chaos at the Sanae IV base in Antarctica and the failure to maintain our airports and their navigational systems. Added to this, we have a water crisis, and electricity is an ongoing crisis. There are many others, too many to mention.
We have not taken care. The Ramaphosa presidency has fallen far short of taking the action needed to fix our infrastructure and the economy, even though many aspects of Operation Vulindlela should be lauded. But Ramaphosa has been inert in acting against dysfunctional and corrupt members of his own Cabinet and party, unwilling or unable to use his power even at moments when he had the greatest support outside of the narrow confines of the ANC. (Thembi Simelane remains a Cabinet minister and similarly, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni is the President’s mouthpiece, ill-considered as she is and facing a Hawks investigation, for instance).
We may speak the language of modern governance on issues like climate change, for instance, but the ANC is a relic which has spawned a corrupt, incapable state that is unable to do much. In addition, the ANC, having lost its electoral majority, appears unable to fathom that it cannot govern alone.
The failure to pass a Budget in February was a disgrace. Since then, the ANC and DA have predictably been arguing in public about VAT increases and such-like, seeming to use the media as a negotiating tool.
Every day, we are bombarded with reports of the Government of National Unity (GNU) collapsing. At the time of writing, the fiscal framework had just been adopted by Parliament, with the DA saying it would bring a legal challenge. So the GNU is teetering on the brink. However, we have heard this so many times that we blink and move on, though quite how the DA will remain in the GNU is very hard to predict. In Parliament on Wednesday, ANC MPs were shamelessly celebrating in the House. On display was that party’s arrogance and how careless it is with its diminished power.
And so, how will South Africa become “future fit”, given the instability we are experiencing within the GNU and various dangerous pretenders to the throne (with Trump’s new and punitive tariffs added to our woes)? The Sibyl’s leaves are heady with chaos here, our collective fate in the hands of feckless politicians. If we want any chance, we need adults to enter the room and get down to the business of fixing our country.
It also means bringing an element of seriousness to the government and being discerning about who represents us all as South Africans, within the Cabinet and outside of it (ambassadors, for instance). This must apply to the current GNU and any future government we have.
Systems fail and institutions lose their credibility when the wrong people head them up and when we normalise the abnormal. Again, think of Trump, and the corruption and poverty of thought which was Jacob Zuma and his administration. The latter’s presidency too was littered with dangerous farce. Think the Nkandla “fire pool”.
Shamed politicians
Sports, arts and culture has long been a ministry where shamed politicians go to while away time. The ANC has never really taken this portfolio seriously, which is shameful and says everything about what the party prioritises. So, when a Sunday newspaper reported that Gayton McKenzie had appointed Jonas White, a Patriotic Alliance member and former ANC mayor, to the council of the Market Theatre, we should not have been surprised. McKenzie himself is a convicted felon, after all. White, it is alleged, is known to be close to McKenzie and was found guilty by the ANC of sexual harassment and then convicted of corruption by a court. The headline called McKenzie’s decision a “sex pest blunder”. Women’s rights, take another tumble.
Several pages later, the same Sunday paper, in its “Society” page (or some such, which is always a reflection of the inanity of the times), reported glowingly on McKenzie who had the assembled crowd “eating out of his hand … with his newfound love for the arts [sic]”.
McKenzie regaled the crowd: “I said, ‘I want home affairs, for obvious reasons,’ and they said, ‘You need to choose another one.’ I said, ‘Probably police, because I know a thing about crime.’ And they said, ‘But you must give us three.’”
(An interesting insight into GNU horse-trading in and of itself. Like an Oprah Winfrey show, there was a Cabinet position for anyone, even the party representing the fringe. But then the GNU is made up of strange bedfellows, as the Budget debacle illustrates so clearly.)
After consulting friends on WhatsApp, McKenzie went on to say, “And one of them says sports, arts and culture … and I thought, ‘Wow, there must be something sporty and arty about me.’”
And so the riff continued, and the crowd acquiesced as crowds do before a dangerous showman. McKenzie is a well-known driver of xenophobia and hate and is patently unfit to represent our country, let alone on matters of arts and culture.
As Richard Pithouse has written, “When McKenzie and the Patriotic Alliance were brought into the government of national unity, all its participants knew that they were right-wing populists whose xenophobia was openly at odds with the Constitution.” There is a reason McKenzie expressed a desire for the home affairs portfolio.
McKenzie is unfit to be a Cabinet minister and decidedly unfit to be in the portfolio he occupies. His clownish behaviour is an embarrassment and most people in the room at the art gallery knew that, surely? Yet, they were comfortable legitimising it all. Many even laughed, playing along in the same way that polite Republicans choose not to see the danger of Trump.
As citizens, we need to think carefully about how our individual and corporate actions encourage a lack of accountability and poor decision-making by politicians. We should not blindly acquiesce to the smooth-talking of someone representing us who is ethically bankrupt and a fomenter of hate.
While the leaves of fate blow in every direction, there is a sense of foreboding all around the world. South Africa, with its unique ability for self-inflicted wounds is again at some sort of precipice, taking its eye off the ball. McKenzie may be the least of our problems, but he is a harbinger of sorts. DM