part of no part

Across the world, representative democracies produce varying versions of pugilist contests that sometimes end in bloodshed and but most often, in farcical viral videos. We, the public, far removed from the elite club of representatives who trade punches and insults are the unwilling, yet, darkly consuming, spectators. From Taiwan to India, from South Africa to Europe, the spectacle of representative democracy has become a political version of “The world`s funniest”. What happened at the State of the Nation Address (SONA) yesterday in Cape Town, besides a comical addition to the World’s funniest, must surely rank as one of the most public displays, since Marikana, of the descent of the dark cloud of the Police State upon the “miracle” of the New South Africa. No doubt, this too will fade into the murk of our everyday struggle to survive the vicissitudes of our neoliberal existence, only to resurface later, in a frenzy of outrage and hope. In our haste to make...

South Africa, like most other countries that have a legacy and reality of inequality, often has to deal with two distinct realities. The one is wealth, opportunity and lavish lifestyles of the "Top Billing" kind, and the other is poverty, lack of opportunity and misery of the "service delivery protest" kind. Before 1994 it was easy to navigate ones way around these two different realities as they were institutionally enshrined in the laws of the country. The enemy for all intents and purposes were well defined and race based. Whites were undoubtedly the enemy, as the system privileged their ability to access opportunities and thus to accumulate and enjoy wealth. Blacks on the other hand were clearly the victims, beyond the brutality of a race based white supremacy; blacks were denied the opportunity to either acquire wealth or to accumulate it.  This unnatural and draconian institutionalisation of privilege and misery was a great unifier. The world, blac...