The Simplified blog

Hi all

The South African President’s open letters show his willingness to be accessible to all South Africans. If only I could understand what they say. Here’s an excerpt from ‘Facts, fiction and mini-skirts’, the open letter published on ANC Today on 27 July 2007.

‘…for those among us who see themselves as agents of progressive change, complete and accurate knowledge, representing accurate understanding of objective reality, liberated from prejudice, false assumptions and propaganda, becomes an imperative and inalienable condition for the untrammelled but responsible exercise of the hard-won right to self-determination.

We have the possibility and latitude and the necessity to speak thus because we live during our own age of revolution. Exactly because it is such an age, all of us face the demand to understand objective reality accurately and objectively, to enable the revolution to decide on the correct strategy, tactics and operations.

[…]

In this situation of an inevitable contest about the future of our country, information, facts, the truth, themselves become an area of contestation. The truth manifests itself as truths. Opponents of change see it as their obligatory task to falsify reality, in their interest. The imperative to understand the critical difference, and in some instances the contradiction, between essence and phenomenon becomes ever-more pressing.’

The letters goes on to use the story of the mini-skirt and a quote from Dickens to discuss post-modernity. In the midst of the discussion is this somewhat baffling sentence: ‘Post-modernism, represented as enhanced human capacity to understand objective reality, dictates that, even out of self-respect, we must see and speak about the unseen world above and beyond the hem of the short skirt sewed in the clothing factory.’

My problem is that I do not have a clear concept of what the letter says. Is it an accusation? Of the opposition or of the media? A discussion? It seems to deal with issues of the press 'twisting the truth'. These are important issues. I would have preferred it if they were explained in a straightforward manner.

Source: Letter from the President, Volume 7, No. 29 •27 July—2 August 2007, ANC Today, the online voice of the African National Congress