Hello and happy Monday.

If you think you’re having a rough day, imagine the mood Richard Poplak, the Daily Maverick’s most sharp-tongued assassin, was in when he penned this piece.

Then again, try arguing, honestly, against what he’s saying, and you may end up being dragged down with him.

Perhaps it’s best we just scratch the surface of what Poplak has to say, and if you’re keen for more, you can read the full article.

In South Africa, the site of democracy’s demise is, of course, Luthuli House, where the ANC is ripping itself to shreds in a manner so vicious that the fight will soon start spilling on to the streets…

South Africa’s authoritarian pathogens are by no means restricted to the ANC, but within it they find their perfect expression. One faction of the party is run by a Z-grade warlord from a farming province, whose stupidity and greed have turned out to be fungible assets in a party defined by stupidity and greed. The other faction is led by a businessman who bought his presidency for the price of a decent private jet — the classic example of a self-anointed princeling who soars millions of light-years above the daily experience of his people.

Take a deep breath.

Right, we’re going back in:

What are they fighting for? That’s a good question. For Ace Magashule (along with the rump of former president Jacob Zuma’s faction, and their EFF allies), it is an economic battle pursued on identitarian lines: public and private sectors in their entirety must be owned and operated by the state, and the beneficiaries must be black Africans linked to the ruling party — a network of patronage and predation that fans out across the country, slurping up every last cent in its path.

Also, they are fighting to spend the rest of their lives out of the slammer.

For Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabal, the fight is for something more esoteric: a developmental state that is non-racial in nature, a gorgeous melange of public and private working in lockstep in order to enrich the entire country, person by person…

For the past 25 years, the ANC has allowed the formal/informal tracks to rot alongside each other. During the mind-boggling plunder of the Zuma era, every last state-owned entity was robbed into insolvency, and then beyond. Literally, at this moment, only a single SOE — the Post Office — could stand on its own rickety legs without a billion-rand bailout, and it has just chased away its turnaround specialist CEO.

Eskom – where government bailouts, and taxpayer’s money, go to die.

Poplak really does have a way with words – observe:

The DA is a laughing stock with its own oligarchic fanbase; the EFF is the reactionary black nationalist wing of the Zuma/Magashule ANC, and a budding patronage mafia in its own right…

With no viable competition, South African democracy, such as it is, unfolds within the ANC. This has proved — there’s no other word for it — catastrophic. A patronage syndicate at war with itself cannot govern: unemployment has ticked up to 29%, easily one of the highest official rates in the world. The economy is unable to grow, but neither can it evolve — a far more important metric of success.

I did warn you that was doom and gloom for a Monday.

Let’s finish with his apocalyptic take on what comes next:

South Africa, on its current trajectory, will soon become a mafia state led by a solitary don who has wiped out the competition. In the post-bailout chaos the new capo will have to pull the great Russian trick of formalising the informal sector and informalising the formal sector, ensuring that all rents flow to one source, and that everyone is subject to the same implicit tyranny…

The man most likely to succeed in this environment is… drum roll… Julius Malema. In the weeks and months to come, we will learn much more about the EFF’s operations, many of which — bank robbing, for instance — are clearly illegal. That said, there is already enough material in the public domain to put him behind bars for years. But who will pursue him into the populist abattoir? The Hawks? The timorous, mouse-like National Prosecuting Authority? Ramaphosa himself?

…Lots of the same old people will stay wealthy under our Putin. Others will be stripped of their wealth and resources so that it can be spread to incumbents faithful to the new don. In other words, the same old shit, just differently positioned. If you’re poor, you’ll certainly notice the difference. If you’re rich, it will all depend on your ability to grovel.

That’s how it ends. Not with a bang, but with a case of Moët and a cheque with eleventy-leven zeroes…

It takes care, intelligence, hard work and — above all — good faith to tend to a democracy. None of that is possible within the ANC of today. And so South African democracy, always imperfect, is dead. What comes next is just a version of what came before.

Yikes.

Perhaps the scariest part of it all is that it’s somewhat hard to argue against much of what he’s saying.

If you want to read the full Poplak article, head here.

[source:dailymaverick]