Age of uncertainty and paradox

Wherever you look in the world, and from whichever angle, the political scene has never looked more peculiar — or precarious

With killers on the loose across the world, every day newspaper front pages are awash with blood. But there are political leaders on the rampage, too. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for example, has exploited the attempted putsch against him a fortnight ago to round up tens of thousands of people opposed to his increasingly authoritarian rule.

In recent years, the judiciary — and specifically Turkey’s Constitutional Court — has stood up to Erdogan’s attempts to concentrate more power in the presidency. Notably, one of Erdogan’s first responses to the drama of Friday July 16 was to axe 2 700 judges. Subsequently, it was reported that two of the 14 members of the Constitutional Court had also been arrested.

Another stab in the heart for democratic institutions and the rule of law. How remarkably convenient for Erdogan. How tempting, President Jacob Zuma must be thinking.

And as an anonymous journalist, fearful for his or her life and liberty, reports on truthout.org, Erdogan has forced 1 577 university deans to resign and more than 500 professors and other academics are to be dismissed. Fifteen universities were shut down entirely. Public intellectuals are silenced; freedom of thought and assembly are denied.

Again, Zuma must be licking his lips. How nice it would be to klap some of those clever blacks and irritating protesters who complain about the failings of government and the corruption that undermines it.

A far-fetched observation? Given the direction of travel, can South Africa really afford to be complacent? Stranger things are happening elsewhere.

Wherever you l ook, and from whichever angle, the political scene has never looked more peculiar — and precarious. Weirdness is the name of the game: from Donald Trump i n the United States to Nigel Farage in Britain and Julius Malema at home — and everywhere in between — there are contrarian, ostensibly anti-establishment figures, appearing to challenge traditional, business-as-usual politics.

Of course, it is a mirage: Trump is as grotesque an example of crass Anglo-capitalism as it is possible to imagine; Farage went to a private school in London and then on to the City; and Malema is a child of the ANC.

These are not authentic, ideological challengers to a political system, but bigoted, neofascist opportunists, deluding voters with their hollow promises of change. Nothing good will come of them.

But this truth cannot mask the dence it has served the interests of the rich.

There was substantive progress in meeting the (admittedly modest) millennium development goals. Confidence in international processes grew and, as a result, 2015 will go down as one of the best in the history of global governance: a new international development finance framework agreed in Addis Ababa, a historic deal on climate change in Paris and a more ambitious set of sustainable development goals to follow the millennium development goals.

Yet, in an entirely different direction, many nation states are turning in on themselves. Though it may not be top of mind for the typical American voter, this lies at the heart of the November election: a choice between the crude nationalism of Trump and the internationalism of Hillary Clinton.

I fear that unless “soft” Republicans sit on their hands, so to speak, Trump will prevail, playing further into the hands of lunatics such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of Islamic State, for whom global instability and a retreat from multilateralism is manna from heaven.

A majority of Britons have already made their choice, and as a result the future of the greatest experiment in regional collaboration and governance — the European Union — is now under real threat.

Where to from here? The world has entered a period of extreme uncertainty, with overlapping economic and political crises. This does not bode well for the future; the evidence of the past is that when these stars align, world war is the inevitable outcome.

Against this backdrop — a part Kafkaesque and part Hobbesian “war of all against all” — next week’s municipal elections in South Africa appears to be small fry, a tiny footnote to a far bigger and more devastating narrative.

Alas, voters are not exactly overburdened with choice. If the devil you know is no longer a remotely justifiable option, given its present leadership, then, on the other hand, where is the credible, authentic, fresh alternative to more of the same old, same old?

In its own way, South Africa is a microcosm of the bigger global picture: a ruling political establishment that has largely run out of steam and fresh ideas, led by an authoritarian populist leader. He, on the one hand, is challenged by a strange but fascinating and charismatic authoritarian populist of potentially even greater danger and, on the other, by an official opposition that may not be able to break free of the idea that it, too, is merely the representative of (other) entrenched interests, however silkily they present and package themselves.

South Africa, like much of the rest of the world, has its own leadership crisis and failure of progressive politics. And this, too, can only lead to trouble.