This is an older article brought to us by BookForum and written by Rian Malan. It is worth reading to remind us that endemic corruption and dictatorship are the norm in world history and that freedom and limited government is the exception. The left wants us to ignore this fact when they try to tell us that America is not exceptional. And in the end, they want us to be just like the rest of the world. But you don’t have to go along with the anti-American agenda of the left. You can choose something better. You can be a conservative and celebrate the fact that we are better than the rest of the world when we live by our original American principles of freedom, rule of law, limited government and especially the system of private property and individual rights that were basic to our founding as a free people.
The central problem of writing about South Africa is that it is almost impossible to explain the country’s slow-motion catastrophe in terms that make sense to foreigners. Consider these headlines, culled from just a fortnight’s newspapers. Johannesburg’s City Press reports that the head of the ruling party’s Political School—set up to nurture “revolutionary morality” among thieving civil servants—is declining to explain how he has come to own two new BMWs and a Maserati. South Africa’s Sunday Times alleges rampant corruption in the administration of Northern Cape province. The same paper reports new attempts to silence a trade-union leader who likens the nation’s rulers to “hyenas” who feed off the poor. Elsewhere, we have FAILED BILLION-DOLLAR EDUCATION PROGRAM; WHISTLE-BLOWER MURDERED; WIFE OF NIA CHIEF ON TRIAL FOR SMUGGLING COCAINE, the NIA being our CIA. And finally, the story of the hour: The National Prosecuting Authority has abandoned its investigation into the whereabouts of $130 million in bribes generated by South Africa’s notorious 1990s arms deal.
