As city officials splash one final bucket of varnish across the gates of Potemkinburg in anticipation of the arrival of the G20-ish, it is possible to read the news and discover that SA has turned a corner and can expect brighter days ahead. And that our slide into being a mafia state run by organised crime is accelerating.
Of course, both can be true: businessman Adrian Enthoven’s encouraging diagnosis, splashed across various news platforms last week, doesn’t necessarily refute the grim prospects National Prosecuting Authority boss Shamila Batohi outlined before parliament at the same time. Growing economies always offer predators good hunting, at least in the short term.
Still, it can be hard to know which big picture to focus on, especially when it comes to the optimistic prognostications of successful businesspeople. Wealth is a powerful antidepressant, and people who work in the corner office will always have a brighter world view than those who clean it. As Hamlet reminds us, there is nothing good or bad, but disposable income makes it so.
And yet who, one also has to ask, is likelier to see the first glimpse of a change in the weather: the stoker labouring down in the boiler room or the people reclining in deckchairs up above, whose continued comfort depends on reading the sky?
All of which is to say I am treating all these diagnoses like the ones I get when I ask Google why I’ve got a headache: cautiously, provisionally, and fairly sure someone is trying to sell me something, but without entirely ruling out catastrophic scenarios.
This week the diagnoses will fly even thicker and faster as a dizzying variety of petitioners, powerbrokers and gentrified pimps all try to use the presence of the G20 to grab a moment in the spotlight and to convince us that SA needs whatever it is they’re selling.
AfriForum has started particularly strongly, with two of its banners torn down by the city, thereby confirming to the world that very bad things are happening to banners in SA. (Is it time for the Trump administration to start offering refugee status to local banners? If you agree, text SUCKER to 0800-MORAL-PANIC and donate today! Offer only open to orange banners; brown and black banners need not apply.)
Even better, the US boycott of the G20 gathering means AfriForum’s crack gaslighting squads can stand down rather than having to spend the week rushing up to American delegates every time they meet a happy-looking Afrikaner and explaining to them that Afrikaners’ trauma response is to appear friendly, confident, employed and asset-owning, with full freedom of expression, association and worship.
President Cyril Ramaphosa will be disappointed by the US stayaway, but in all fairness to Donald Trump, it was the only sensible choice: making sure your administration is redacting the right names from the Epstein files isn’t something you want to leave to underlings.
Besides, I suspect deep down in his secret heart, in that private space he reserves for his Ankole herd and perhaps a love of show tunes, Ramaphosa understands that he is not only hosting the G20 gathering that he deserves but also one that perfectly represents the country, the planet and the times in which it is taking place.
After all, what better place to witness the collapse of old systems and the formation of new blocs than a city simultaneously blighted and bursting with youth? And who better to welcome these people, from the admirable and adequate to the disappointing and the downright dismal, than a president who has been all these things?
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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