every person is equally virtuous exist side by side. It goes some way towards explaining the national proclivity towards authoritarianism because, if everyone is equally virtuous in their behaviour, the only way one can distinguish a hierarchy is through power and who holds it. And, at the top of that tree is the president – he who is nobody’s equal. By default, he should be due more respect than any other. It represents a profound distortion of a valuable idea.
And dignity is a person’s duty to maintain. There is a reason even the most wretched can appear dignified in the face of trauma and pain. It is a reflection of how they carry themselves, their attitude and behaviour. Kings and peasants both can be dignified in their own homes.
What is the result of this ongoing contestation? In his novel 1984, George Orwell describes ‘Doublethink’, the controlling characteristic of the state’s autocratic language. He writes: ‘Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.’
The genius of Orwell’s invention is the counter-intuitive blow it inflicts when first you try to imagine it made real. How can one possibly believe, say, black and white to be the inverse of one another and yet the same thing? It’s a headache in the making.
In Orwell’s dystopia, the government consists of four principal departments: the Ministry of Peace (which deals with war); the Ministry of Love (torture); the Ministry of Plenty (rationing); and the Ministry of Truth (propaganda). When speaking of the one, inherent to the idea is its real, opposite nature. In 1984, the purpose of Doublethink is to regulate discontent because if troublesome words and ideas do not exist, nothing remains for unhappiness to coalesce around. And so its full and cruel effect is made evident to the reader.
It is not entirely inapplicable to South Africa. Here, this kind of contradiction is alive and well, prevalent in, and often the product of, the ANC government’s particular interpretation. Even those words whose meaning you might think too simple or fundamental to be affected have been altered in some way. Every word is a nexus for a series of competing forces, and through tortuous manipulation and uncritical assumption, black very often means white and vice versa.
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