Skip to main content

Embracing Dictatorship


Dictatorships do not come as once off events, they are a gradual process. The story of the proverbial frog in a cooking pot explains the gradualism associated with how a dictatorship settles in. My grandfather was the first person to tell me the story.


Later in life, and after reading more about the cold bloodedness of frogs, I understood why the frog enjoyed the water temperature until it started cooking it. I also understood why the frog was trusting to the one cooking it, because, and indeed, the frog was taken out of cold water and the frog needed some warmth. 


In the theory of dictatorship we learn that dictatorships are easily embraced in societies 

  1. whose propaganda machinery has ONLY ONE narrative 
  2. whose history includes a media hyped socialisation to justify the erosion of rights by the powers that be, mostly the 'establishment'.
  3. whose leadership has an abundance of benevolence and social approval to an opiate and/or personality cult level
  4. that are blindly believing in a dishonest cognitive elite hellbent on preserving its social and economic (generally ill-gotten) status
  5. that have legal mechanisms to suppress political activity to levels where even PRAYING becomes illegal, and political activity can be insurrectory.
  6. that have a thieving business community that benefits from a constrained free political activity environment; a slavey context 
  7. that have a colluding business community to a dictatorship, as long as its ideological bottom lines are balance sheet friendly

When the above sneak into a society, it is the elite that are first to be targeted to collude. They are softly enrolled into an agenda, generally incentivised with fear of a system collapse and a change in class livelihoods. Lately the moods of the investor community as rated by Moody and others is the new benchmark to define rules of total enrolment to what 'they' approve.


I just hope as citizens we are not frogs in a cooking pot. I hope we are aware that the water temperature is rising and we may soon be unable to take the heat. I hope we are not in training to accept human rights violations irrespective of WHO's RIGHTS are violated. I just hope these restrictions are GENUINELY HONEST and are not HERDING us into a NARRATIVE.


The COVID19 restrictions, notwithstanding that they are generic public health response mechanisms, should not be allowed into a normality. I want to really believe RESTRICTIONS are not avoiding to have the VIEWS of society known on the 'NONSENSE' that is going on around the former President by THOSE SUPPORTING HIM and THOSE THAT DO NOT. 


We are a maturing democracy, we must not fear OUR VIEWS as a society on all matters. Difference creates opportunities for breakthroughs. If we are unable to call wrong wrong and right right, we might be colluding in the concretising rule of law dictatorship or anarchy based dictatorship. Both must be rejected.


🤷🏽‍♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela

🤷🏽‍♂️Be ngisho nje


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The DD Mabuza I know, dies a lesson to leadership succession mavericks.

When we completed our Secondary Teachers Diploma, together with two cohorts that followed us, at the Transvaal College of Education, and we later realised many other colleges, in 1986, we vowed to become force multipliers of the liberation struggle through the power of the chalk and chalkboard.   We left the college with a battle song ‘sesi bona nge sigci somoya, sesi bona nga madol’nkomo, Siyaya siyaya’. We left the college with a battle song' sesi bona nge sigci somoya, sesi bona nga madol'nkomo, Siyaya siyaya'. This song, a call to war with anyone, system, or force that sought to stop us from becoming a critical exponent and multiplier to the struggle for liberation, was a powerful symbol of our commitment. We understood the influence we were going to have on society. I was fortunate to find a teaching post in Mamelodi. Mamelodi was the bedrock of the ANC underground. At one point, it had a significantly larger number of MK operatives than several other townships. Sa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Farewell, Comrade Bra Squire, a larger-than-life figure in our memories: LITERALLY OR OTHERWISE

It’s not the reality of Cde Squire's passing that makes us feel this way. It is the lens we are going to use to get to grips with life without him that we should contend with. A literally larger-than-life individual who had one of the most stable and rarest internal loci of control has left us. The thief that death is has struck again.  Reading the notice with his picture on it made me feel like I could ask him, "O ya kae grootman, re sa go nyaka hierso." In that moment, I also heard him say, "My Bla, mfanakithi, comrade lucky, ere ko khutsa, mmele ga o sa kgona." The dialogue with him without him, and the solace of the private conversations we had, made me agree with his unfair expectation for me to say, vaya ncah my grootman.    The news of his passing brought to bear the truism that death shows us what is buried in us, the living. In his absence, his life will be known by those who never had the privilege of simply hearing him say 'heita bla' as...
2 comments
Read more

Celebrating a life..thank you Lord for the past six decades.

Standing on the threshold of my seventh decade, I am grateful for the divine guidance that has shaped my life. I am humbled by the Lord’s work through me, and I cherish the opportunity He has given me to make even the smallest impact on this world.  Celebrating His glory through my life and the lives He has allowed me to touch is the greatest lesson I have learnt. I cherish the opportunity He has given me to influence people while He led me to the following institutions and places: The Tsako-Thabo friends and classmates, the TCE friends and comrades, the MATU-SADTU friends and comrades, the Mamelodi ANCYL comrades, the ANC Mamelodi Branch Comrades, the Japhta Mahlangu colleagues and students, the Vista University students and colleagues, the Gauteng Dept of Local Government colleagues, the SAFPUM colleagues, the  SAAPAM community, the University of Pretoria colleagues, the Harvard Business School’s SEP 2000 cohort network, the Fribourg University IGR classmates, the Georg...
1 comment
Read more