Obama’s doublespeak

JUSTICE Malala (“Less talk, more do will bring on New Dawn”, DD July 23) is right to say there’s too much talk about improving the condition of SA and too little action. He’s wrong to say this is the fault of the South African people who have been disempowered by two political coups in the last decade and the systematic undermining of our political culture.

South Africans, like many around the world, know they have no political power. The irony is that Malala sees the alternative to “talking too much” in a talk! That is, in the windy rhetoric of the has-been US politician Barack Obama whose corrupt, procorporate policies led to the victory of Donald Trump.

I wouldn’t say Obama’s speech was completely empty. There was a fair amount of self-serving disinformation about how we must beware of “strong men” (this from the man who served as elected dictator of the US for eight years) and must seek peace and harmony (this from the man who wrecked Libya and did his best to wreck Syria by sponsoring Islamist terrorism).

Most importantly, Obama told us (with the usual selfassurance of the colonial administrator) that we must not lose faith in politics. He was not saying we should overthrow the current system and replace it with one in which the people regain their voice. Instead he said we must work within the current corrupt and undemocratic system of which Obama was the guardian and now is the publicist.

This is the line Malala takes when he says we must work as individuals to build a better nation. He also says (copying every corporate propagandist in this country) that we must do this for Nelson Mandela, a man who devoted much of his life to furthering a collective response to the self-seeking individualism which made apartheid possible. Like many, Malala defames the memory of Mandela. More importantly, he endorses a political quietism which undermines the possibility of improving the lives of South Africans. — Mathew Blatchford, Alice