South Africa’s struggle with corrosive cynicism

THERE is a burgeoning histrionic quality to South Africa's political narratives, often defined by incoherence and punctuated by intermittent lapses into lucid consciousness. We are degrading the constitutional robustness of our democracy.

- LORENZO DAVIDS

We have government ministers speaking as if every sentence is a lotto entry, hoping that it would sound like wisdom from the gods to their constituents. We have a library full of political regrets and promises to do better. In the middle of all this sit the South African public, abused and emaciated, desperately gulping down this political toxicity as if it’s manna from heaven.

Every other day, a new political crisis is generated to “shut down, “advance’, or “forward” some issue that must be addressed “right now.” We find ourselves increasingly estranged from the norms of sound, practical administration, which renders the deliberate pursuit of effective and stable governance an elusive, abandoned ideal.

South Africans seem to live uncomfortably with the concept of a stable, rational and functioning government. There is a growing irrationality embedded in our statehood. We seem to become restless without a “struggle”. We have such a need to fight each other, fight any system, and fight anything that serves us, because we have an inherent belief that the system and the thing that works are inherently corrupt, bad, or against us.

The political saviour we hail today will be replaced next week. A cause so urgent that it prompts marches down freeways, burning iyres on main roads, and vandalised offices, factories and shopfronts, will be abandoned next month for the next urgent cause. South Africans need to pause for a moment: maybe we, the people, are the problem.