The Economist had a piece on South Africa in the latest issue that unintentionally contradicted itself. I usually try not to let others do my work for me, but these two paragraphs warrant regurgitating in full:
The ANC has marked up some notable achievements. It enshrined civil and social rights in the constitution. It abolished the death penalty. It has built more than 3m free or subsidised houses, and has brought clean water, sanitation and electricity to millions more. Every child now has a right to at least 12 years of education. More than 15m people, almost a third of the population, get some form of welfare. Severe malnutrition among children under five has been almost eradicated. Some 6m pupils get free school meals. Having at last accepted the link between HIV and AIDS, the ANC now has a grip on the epidemic, one of the world’s worst. Crime is coming down; the murder rate has fallen by half from its peak in 1994. The ANC has set up anti-corruption agencies in a proclaimed effort to bring corrupt people to book.
But for most South Africans, the stench of graft, patronage and greed surrounding the ruling party itself is now too strong. The romance, solidarity and heroism of the days of struggle have gone. In the popular mind, ANC people, from the president down, seem keener on power, status and ostentatious wealth than on improving the lot of the poor. Always a broad church, the ANC is riven with factionalism and in-fighting. Lip service is paid to the old ideals, but the party seems increasingly rudderless. It has lost its way.
It seems that the first of these paragraphs is hard to dismiss and the second does not hold up on the evidence. No one I know of in South Africa supports graft, patronage, or greed. But how can one possibly assert that the stench of those things “surrounding the party is now too strong” when the ANC will win the next national elections overwhelmingly and with a 60%+ tally? This is a peculiar and arithmetically-challenged definition of “most.” In fact, the first paragraph is empirically right and the second is empirically wrong.
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