Ozymandias, by Percy Shelley:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said —“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
They have done it. It took a while but the ANC has now created the greatest jobs-destroying machine in the world, as attested to by the latest unemployment statistics. Undisputed; the best of the best. SA can now take a deep breath, step back, and marvel at depth and breadth of the economic wasteland the ANC has a delivered. A triumph.
It’s not easy destroying jobs. You need to work at it. It takes time and dedication and focus, but the ANC hasn’t skipped a beat. When the economy would occasionally grow by a fraction, it kept at it. Undeterred, relentlessly, it would respond by driving back economic growth. Again and again, even when the global economy was against it, it would eradicate hope.
This has been a generational project. So many have contributed, for so long, behind the scenes and across the board, at every level of government, to ensure the total destruction of the economy. And don’t think the ANC will stop now. There is more to achieve still. Some laughed at the ANC’s ultimate goal, of 100% unemployment. They aren’t laughing now. We can do this.
And it is a team effort. For decades now the country has rallied behind the ANC; electorally indulged its inertia, excused its incompetence, accommodated its corruption and implicitly endorsed its useless policy suite. Let’s hope the ANC thanks its fans — they have been behind it every step of the way.
There have been doubters. Some believed Cyril Ramaphosa would reverse the unbelievable gains his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, made. But he never faulted. Systematically he continued where Zuma left off. Quarter after economic quarter, he drove unemployment further through the floor. But that is not to detract from Zuma’s achievement. That one man could carry the expectations of a nation so catastrophically, for so long, speaks to a kind of professionalism rarely on public display in this country.
There are those in SA who have made it difficult for the ANC. The DA, which for some backwards reason, seeks to create — not destroy — jobs, has bucked the trend in the Western Cape almost every time the latest statistics are released. It has made the ANC’s task so much more difficult, and thus its achievement all the more awe-inspiring. Competition, they say, brings out the best in us. The ANC has risen to the occasion every time, and without fail.
Consider some of the sacrifices the ANC has made along the way. Most recently, and unselfishly, it has sought even to stop paying its own employees. To be a world champion, you have to fine tune every element of your performance. Few parties the world over would seek to destroy even themselves in pursuit of their objective. Not the ANC. We are lucky to have it. This is what raw, unadulterated excellence looks like.
There is much to be written about the detail; about the ANC’s plans and how they were so brilliantly executed — the unerring appointment of the inept and compromised, the sustained disdain for best practice, the self-belief in its own ideas and policies as absolutely poisonous. On every front, there are a thousand words to be written. When books are produced about its achievement, no doubt the right words will be found. Space does not allow for a full tribute here. Suffice it to say, the party’s every decision has been executed with the necessary and total disgust for economic growth.
Finally, a word about the callous disregard for the human condition this kind of achievement demands. You have to really not care, at all. That takes effort. Faced with the brutal reality on the ground, of people desperate and impoverished, struggling to support themselves and their families, of the anger and resentment, and the utter depravity of it all, you simply need to turn your face and hold the line.
You cannot be moved. You cannot care. Empathy, sympathy and compassion must be banished from your emotional repertoire, and replaced with a stone-cold heart and a self-interest almost inhuman in its contempt for the lives of ordinary people. And that is the ANC of 2021 — an immovable and savage weapon for pain and suffering.
My name is the ANC. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
That, we do. But we also humble ourselves before the behemoth. Never before has a country been so in love with its own torturer. But what a torturer. The ANC lives, the ANC leads. The resultant wasteland now stretches out before us all. Forward.
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