As we tip-toe gingerly into a new, looking-glass era, SA seems a relatively safe and sane place to be. After US President Donald Trump’s recent twitter spat with Meryl Streep, for example, his team had a spiritualist-style response. "Why is everything taken at face value?" complained Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s indefatigable mouthpiece and apologist. "You always want to go by what’s comes out of his mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart."
Though Kellyanne Conway said this on CNN, she may well deny it. Trump and his squad constantly denied things said or done which, when in the US during the election, I’d seen the previous evening on TV.
Mike Pence, now vice-president, would perform his disavowals sneeringly — but with a slight tightening of his nostrils, like those liveried flunkeys who used to shuffle after elephants in the circus ring to clear up the piles of dung left in their wake.
If the US voters wanted entertainment, the next four years may be a long-running, can’t-believe-my-ears reality show. In the UK, during the Brexit referendum, supporters on both sides often behaved more like rowdy soccer fans, baying slogans or booing opponents. Trump rallies took this to extremes.
While the US and several European countries drift rightward, and even towards unreality, voters here have begun to buck that resentment-fuelled trend.
In our municipal elections last year there was a drop in unquestioning loyalty to the ANC. Much urban discontent was from the new black middle class. Meanwhile in rural areas, using the index of their own experience, many also stayed away from the polls to express disapproval.
Yet as the yearning for a charismatic saviour diminishes in Africa, that dangerous illusion rises in the West. In the US and several European countries there is a clear temptation, fuelled by rage at the inequalities of globalisation, to look towards ultra-nationalist, authoritarian leaders. Now the relatively well-educated in the West are voting for tycoons who will do the least to help them.
In SA, by contrast, many far less educated citizens are making more informed decisions. Just short of 23 years after our first democratic election, voters are prepared to punish the ANC for complacency and corruption.
So the jockeying to succeed Jacob Zuma has begun in earnest, though this has to be done in code and by stealth as it is frowned upon to show ambition or campaign openly.
To get an insight into the dynamics of the current ANC succession debate, read Robert Harris’s thriller, Conclave, about the election in the near future of a new pope. Secreted behind locked doors in the Sistine Chapel, cardinals have to mask their own ambitions as they horse-trade, form factions, gossip bitchily, blackmail, back-stab and occasionally pray as they wait for the Holy Spirit to descend mysteriously and anoint a righteous "Pope-able".
It’s rather like that with the ANC, though here intrigue is conducted via media leaks and innuendo. The public, even most ordinary ANC members, will have to wait like the crowds that gather in St Peter’s Square during a papal election, staring up to see the colour of smoke rising above the Sistine Chapel. Black indicates that the cardinals are still deadlocked, while white smoke signals the advent of a new pope.
SA, even so, is moving forwards as simultaneously much of the West reverts to the obscurantism expressed by Kellyanne Conway: why can’t we just ignore what the President of the US says and instead, "look at what’s in his heart"? Frankly, Kellyanne, I don’t want to: it may be the Heart of Darkness.
• Rostron is a journalist and author.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.