Description
The starting point of the book is to problematise the narrative of the irrational ANC voter, tracing it to the racist idea of Black people as a White man’s burden, incapable of thinking for themselves.
This paternalistic treatment of Black people, where they are seen as needing supervision because they can’t be trusted to behave rationally without a more superior person hovering over them, is rooted in our amoral past. It continues to find expression in modern South Africa because while apartheid may have been abolished, the thinking that arose from it, across the colour divide, has never ended.
It is for this reason that Black people themselves, particularly the middle class, are a loud voice in the “ANC voters are unthinking” narrative. Seeing themselves as having superior logic, and the ANC voters in rural areas and townships as being inferior in their thinking, they believe themselves to be the only ones capable of rational thought.
The book is a demand for nuance. The story of the ANC is not a simple one, even as many are simplistic in how they analyse and articulate it.
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