The African adage that “when two elephants fight, it’s the grass that gets trampled” seems amazing apt at the moment. Not just in SA, where two ANC bulls are fighting each other at the country’s expense, but in the world at large.
The grass — us ordinary people in this age-old metaphor — is always the first to get disregarded and knocked out. While the lead bull — President Cyril #DoNothing Ramaphosa — fights his predecessor as the head of the country and governing party, Thabo #ImAlwaysRight Mbeki — over who gets to own the ridiculous national dialogue talk shop extravaganza, we citizens get less attention than ever.
Good luck getting that pothole sorted now — unless it’s on the route to and from the airport or G20 hotels and conference venues. Just like the 2010 Fifa World Cup, the focus will be on the main venues and not those broken water pipes in Ga-Rankuwa or repair the sewage treatment plants along the now infested Vaal river.
I suspect I’m thinking about the world in terms of elephants because I’m on holiday with my wife and son, who are in the Kruger Park for the first time. We’ve seen lots of elephants, particularly babies, as well as lions and cheetahs. Also, all the other wonderful animals, but the big cats are always the top of everyone’s must-see list.
My wildlife-loving, adventurous parents loved the Kruger Park, so we came often. I was always fascinated by elephants, which are truly remarkable creatures who live up to 60 years. They only die (naturally) when their sixth set of molars wears out and they starve.
I was particularly struck on this trip by a remarkable anecdote in the Letaba elephant museum and its profoundly primal nature. “An older bull must have lost the fight and was attempting to flee from the younger conqueror,” recollected park employee Rudi Sippel, who witnessed the fatal elephant attack.
“The latter was stabbing him from behind. The older bull protected his vulnerable flanks by turning his rear towards the younger bull. Exhausted, he could no longer sustain this and the younger bull succeeded in stabbing him in the neck. When the tusk broke through the skin it sounded like a gunshot and the older bull bellowed in agony.
“The wounded bull went down on his knees and was repeatedly stabbed in the neck and rib cage before he collapsed. The younger bull walked some distance away, then came back to turn the stricken bull over and urinate on its head.
“He returned time after time to push and prod the fallen animal. Ranger Ben Pretorius mercifully shot the old bull. The shot frightened the younger bull away but he returned again that night to push the carcass around. Some of the stab wounds were found to be 50cm deep.”
Remind you of any world leaders? Or titans of industry? Or Big Tech firm CEOs who talk about “crushing” the competition? This primal male behaviour is also prevalent in human society, isn’t it? Men who have won the fight get, well, primal. They kick their opponent when he’s down — figuratively “urinating on its head”.
Even worse, they have fought dirty all along. Big social media or tech firms squeeze out smaller competitors by being monopolists, which is what the US justice department has argued against Google twice, and last year won a court victory declaring Google a “monopolist”.
Google didn’t just win its various fights in various business categories, it totally eviscerated the competitor. There is now only programmatic advertising as a means to reach consumers — a deeply flawed business model that is riddled with fraud and fake eyeballs. As much as half of all adverts served are not seen by humans, copious research shows; while most of us just ignore those adverts anyway.
Everything is searched and indexed by Google, which recommends where people should go and where they get their information. New AI search tools will summarise that for you so you don't even have to go read that pesky article on a news website. Google will get its AI to help you stab a 50cm tusk wound into another limping media company by (trying) to do the media’s job for you.
In the past few years there’s a new term you often hear when describing the state of the media industry: “news deserts”. Google, along with Facebook and all the other data brokers have turned consumers into products and revenue streams. As a result, the information produced by legitimate media organisations that source, fact check and publish the data is being further disintermediated by the primal bull that won the fight.
The grass is tired of being trampled, but the elephants don’t care. Does that sound like a stretched metaphor? Just ask the media organisations. The grass always gets trampled and the children starve first.
• Shapshak is editor-in-chief of Stuff.co.za.
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