Commentators, bring it on!

No one should be surprised that Thought Leader is the top blog site of most local aggregators. Few other sites provide such vivid, candid and diverse comments in response to postings. Bearing in mind that most of us regular contributors are here by invitation — an exceptional requirement — the commentators are not. Where other media-related blog sites are exclusive to employees only, Thought Leader eschews this kind of incest, preferring to diversify the gene pool.

Yet, with isolated exceptions, the comments are astute, perspicacious, creative, excogitative, refined and rhetorically succinct. They engage and develop the blogger’s thought. That is just so cool! Maybe that’s what drew me back despite the threats and the fear campaign.

Emil Wentzel’s and MF Cassim’s responses to “So, what’s changed?” are examples. Not only have they furthered the debate, but have prompted me to rethink my position. Me, the angry Che Guevarra, the obstinate Wittgenstein, the nihilistic Nietzsche, the defiant Paul, the float-like-a-butterfly-sting-like-a-bee Ali, the vengeful self-righteous Torquemada. They have shaken the foundations of my opinions.

I have not changed my views. Yet.

If I could come to believe the implausible hype and spin of the cabal of rainbow nationalists, believe the evil tripartite alliance will be defeated, that Frodo really will hurl the one ring into the fires of Mount Doom, if I could believe that enough righteous people can be found amid the moral decrepitude of this Sodom and Gomorrah for it to be given a second chance, then I will vote again. Fact is I can’t. That’s not to denigrate conflicting opinions, but I can’t stare myself in the eyes and say my faith is that strong. Not yet.

It was strong and healthy in 1994, but 14 years of ineptitude, incompetence, greed, entrenchment, criminality, lies and racism have left it frail and impotent.

But I digress … As someone who has been writing and speaking, reporting and editorialising for a living spanning 33 years next month, I cherish the cut and thrust of argument. But equally I abhor the empty rhetoric of the powerful and the dictatorial. I love clever insults that hark back to the days of Churchill vs Bernard Shaw vs Astor. But the monosyllabic sludge of the MXit generation leaves me as unmoved as the stuck-record tick-talk of the armies of AAAs.

In a world domesticated by the dull regurgitation of words on pages or doped out on dancing shouting carbon-based life forms on a stage, the cogent, coherent and original thoughts and words of Wentzel and Cassim are, soos ons Afrikaanse mense sou s^e, ‘n riem onder my hart.

Thanks folks. Keep setting that bar higher.

Who knows … maybe, just maybe, one day being South Africa will really be something to be proud of?

Maybe one day sheep won’t determine that crooks shall hold guns to our foreheads?

Maybe one day a mighty ship of state will sail “from the shores of greed, across the reefs of need, through the squalls of hate”?

Maybe one day I won’t have cause to protest any more?

Then I will only compliment — as I’m doing now.