TROUBLES EXPOSE LACK OF DIRECTION
THE world today is in turmoil. The absence of ideas as to how to dig humanity out of the abyss is as glaring as is the dearth of leadership.
Look around and you will see an unsettling cocktail of confusion, war mongering and the rise of religious and nationalist fanaticism – all in the absence of formidable statesmen with clear ideas and moral gravitas.
For about a decade after 1990, there was a sense in the world that human thought was moving in the direction of the West.
That decade was inaugurated with the dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union, leading intellectual luminaries like Francis Fukuyama to declare “the end of history” with the exuberance of a child.
At the time, those who were unhappy about Fukuyama’s prophetic claim struggled to find evidence to support their hunch that history could not end just like that.
Marxists across the world were left stranded by their erstwhile ideological sponsor – the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin lamented that his country was “unlucky” as “it was decided to carry out this Marxist experiment on us … instead of some country in Africa”.
This was a racist Eastern leader regretting deeply that Marxism had wasted Russians’ time, while Americans were wearing fash- ionable clothes and enjoying technological gadgets under capitalism. But the party in the West did not last long.
By the mid-2000s, the appeal of Western ideas was undermined by the pathetic record of third world countries that had enthusiastically embraced capitalist counselling.
Inequality skyrocketed all over the world, even in the US. As this was happening, the year 2008 was waiting with a big spoon of humble pie to shove into Fukuyama’s mouth; banks in the global headquarters of capitalism – the US – collapsed like houses of cards.
Since then the US has been in crisis mode. Nary even the ascent of Barack Obama could patch up the widening holes in America’s leaky leadership boat.
Give it to him: Obama is the best orator of our time, but the sweetness of his poetry and the pithiness of his prose could no longer fool the world to believe that America was still a global leader.
The world is now bracing itself for the prospect of a Neanderthal called Donald Trump. Goodness knows how many wars the dumbdumb could cause.
Across the Atlantic, the fragility of the threads that had held the pretentiously strong European fabric together have now been exposed dramatically by Brexit.
It does not matter how much Angela Merkel pontificates, we know now that the idea of European unity under a supra-state umbrella is nothing more than the mane of a dead lion.
To the east, a Stalin incarnate – Vladimir Putin – is shaking his tail as he licks his chops over Europe’s widening cracks.
In the midst of all this, chaos reigns supreme in the Middle East. Nobody knows how and when the war in Syria will end.
All we know is that jihadism is at large.
History will record that George W Bush is the idiot who set Iraq and Afghanistan ablaze. Europeans can’t wait to spit at his grave for causing them a migration problem they have no clue how to solve.
The end of thought in Europe has fertilised the soil for a virulent nationalism to germinate. No one knows where this is going.
The rising giant of Asia – China – seems hesitant (at least for now) to lead the world. It is probably aware of the questionability of its domestic governance model. Only a handful of impressionable copycats in South Africa occasionally talk about something to learn from China, but they are too shallow to comprehend China’s subtly textured strategy. All this means that the world is left without clear ideas as to how to move forward, and thus floats rudderless at sea. The scariest thing is that our continent, Africa, is at its weakest. The dinosaurs we call leaders have either atrophied or are downright vacuous.
The African Union is a monumental waste of money, chaired by a woman who cannot be accused of ever propounding an original idea.
When global waters are as stormy as they now are, that’s when South Africa needed a captain with the sharpest mind. Sadly, not even the brightest torch can find one decent idea in the darkness of our president’s head.
In a time of rampant confusion, such as the world is in right now, it is time for thinkers to take up the torch and show humanity the way. If men of letters don’t stand up, how are we to see their value? –