Revitalise grassroots politics
SOUTH Africans are set to go to the polls in the most crucial elections in the nation’s history.
The performance of our election politics in today’s drama-filled atmosphere has been reduced to a carnival of unbridled insults, deception, overloaded sensation, and character assassination.
What happens to a democracy when it loses all semblance of public memory, and the nation is abandoned to fill the coffers of the well connected?
What happens when the povertystricken masses are brushed clean from our collective and are the object of unchecked humiliation and disdain by our elected leaders?
Our election manifestos are now dominated by carefully scripted images and rhetoric, most of which will benefit the elite and their allies.
The country is festooned with photographs, posters, and slogans, some are benign and some malignant.
To reclaim our democracy, we must revitalise politics at grassroots levels.
We have to understand and comprehend how fragile our democracy has become.
Politicians have now drawn their battle lines based upon accusations, lies and raw emotional messaging and street theatre.
Political opportunists appeal to the darker side of human emotions, like anger, resentment, and naked hatred.
George Bernard Shaw once said: “Politics is the last resort of the scoundrel.”
In the run-up to the elections, many aspiring leaders are invoking patriotism, to win your precious vote.
It was Samuel Johnson, who, on the evening of April 7, 1775, made this famous statement: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
When you enter the polling booths on May 8, remember the words of Ayn Rand, who once said, in 1957 exactly 62 years ago: “When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion, when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing.
“When you see money flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favours, when you see men get richer by graft and pull, and your laws do not protect you against them, but protect them against you. When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed.”
FAROUK ARAIE Actonville