South Africa is entering
the intensive phases of its election season. The ultimate prize of politics,
government, is at stake. The outcomes of elections have constantly reconfigured
social and political networks. Depending on the reach, strength, and resilience
of the ruling class or establishment, the matrices of power in a society never
remain the same after an election. The cognitive elite, or thinkers, are often
the early victims or beneficiaries of post-election changes. They are equally
influencers of cognitive trajectories society might embrace through their
collusion or intervention, including belligerence. To this end, caution is
necessary for thinkers during this phase of national selection of public
representation.
The
2024 national and provincial elections are poised to be the most consequential
in defining South Africa's democratic and political order. The hegemonic hold
of the governing ANC has been under intense pressure since the historic 1994
democratic breakthrough. It has become essential to consider what cautions thinkers
should familiarise themselves with. Thinkers are persons who have a well-developed
faculty of thinking. They are conceptual, independent, reflective, and
open-minded. They are not necessarily academically qualified but are scholarly
because they pursue a deeper meaning of issues.
During
elections, thinking spaces risk being befallen by outward and inner
catastrophes due to their positions in the wake of election
manifestos, which promise a better way of advancing the fragile constitutional
and democratic order. This condition is often characterised as cognitive
collusion or connivance by those with advanced faculties of thought to rescue
society from the tyranny of majorities whose true north represents the convergence
of catastrophe points.
The
outward dimension of such catastrophe is evident in the collapsing public
infrastructure, service delivery dysfunctions, leadership challenges, and
worrying economic indicators. Thinkers often choose between giving all the good
reasons why society has dysfunctions or pointing out the farce that political
electioneering can proffer to an otherwise intellectually unvaccinated herd of
voters.
The
inner devastation is less manifest but might be worse or more endangering than
we think. It is the absorption or co-option of most thinkers into state
machinery as its human organs of state who might have forsaken their
'conscience of reason' character for 'public power'. Flirting with the coercive
power of the state, an opiate to thinkers as we have seen under Hitler's Nazi
Germany and potentially Netanyahu's Israel, redefines thinkers during an
election or high-stakes regime change moments. Their relationship with power
and those that pay the most taxes is often recalibrated to align with a funded
narrative of social transformation. The euphoria of being a thinker in an era
where everything about society is potentially up for review, including
rewriting templates of human coexistence, chokes the capability to pause and
ask 'what works and what doesn't.
Thinkers
who are expected to propagate reliance on tried and tested systems and
procedures in many fields can easily find themselves eagerly believing the
dominant electioneering rhetoric and propaganda. In this mode, they tend to
forsake their standards of critical thinking at the altar of being politically
correct. The worst occurs when thinkers, while not believing or agreeing with
chosen paths or doctrines by the political party they support, yet find it
(intellectually) prudent to pretend belief and not be deceived. The greatest
crime against humanity disasters has been found to have happened in societies
where the intellectual rigour amongst the cognitive elite was at comparatively
admirable levels.
When
those expected to point out the incorrectness of certain conduct in the name of
attracting voter support do not stand up and shout not in our name, society
will cruise into a morally ruinous election contest. Parties that emerge as the
best in rationalising the correctness of their nonsense easily become the
sensible ones that society votes for. Instead of refusing the intellectual
concessions political party loyalty- a proven adversary of intellectual
freedom- extorts, thinkers should insist on their freedom of expression and
conscience.
The
apartheid experience is reason enough for thinkers to continually review the
political or ideological curtains they might have volunteered themselves into
or are herded towards. This includes the ability of thinkers to readmit into
their midst those who made or perceived to have made the sacrifice of the
intellect. Amongst thinkers, political party manifestos during an election
should be the currency with which their best thinking is facilitated to give
society the most significant and valuable thinking.
Thinking in this phase of our national development should come from a place where it gives us a clear conscious view of our opinions, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing what is good for us as a human species, and the energy to agitate for appropriate paths continually. Thinkers are always encouraged to be human nodes characterised simply by loyalty to the idea of truth. Anything outside this will be a compact with their suicide. CUT!!!
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