By Alec Hogg
The universe sometimes surprises us in unexpected ways.
A decade back as part of a sponsorship obligation I landed in a full-day workshop hosted by Nassim Taleb. Hearing this economic activist’s ideas and then reading his books, especially the brilliant Fooled By Randomness, dramatically altered many of my perceptions.
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I’ve felt a similar impact after last month accepting a cocktail invitation to another small gathering. It introduced me to historian Yuval Noah Harari and a rattling of my intellectual cage. Primarily through his revolutionary book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
Taleb teaches us to question what influential people say, especially popular pundits. Harari urges us to re-examine the ingrained myths which shape so many societal norms and hence our thinking.
Most of these long-held beliefs, Harari explains in Sapiens, come from deep history. They are now so deeply ingrained we accept them as “culture”. Not since Robert Cialdini’s Influence is one urged so avidly to reflect on the way we have been hard-wired by society.
The myths Harari tips us off about were mostly created by vested interests to justifying falsehoods. New ones are being continuously developed, especially in transforming societies. Yesterday’s interview with the South African State’s outgoing chief procurement officer Kenneth Brown, offered me an opportunity to examine a myth in gestation.
Those behind SA corruption and crony capitalism are camped against Brown. He is a major obstacle to their agenda after his unit was tasked in the 2016 Budget to eliminate R25bn in wasted public sector expenditure within three years.
The desperation of these dark forces is evident through their creation of increasingly ludicrous myths. Their pawns in full cry on social media claiming Brown was ejected from National Treasury after being exposed as a tool of “white monopoly capital.”
The real story is very different. Last year Brown was off for six months recovering from a serious back operation. The 19-year veteran had planned to leave National Treasury in December 2015 but after Nenegate, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan urged him to stay, and he agreed as “it was a time for all-hands-on-deck.”
In June he again scheduled to leave, but was prevailed upon to continue for another six months. Again, Brown’s new employer, Standard Bank, accepted this was “in the national interest”. With a well-trained successor now in place and the procurement unit staffed up, Gordhan has finally given his blessing for an end December departure.
Society will probably never be able to stop odious actors from perpetrating propaganda. But free access to information makes it a lot more difficult to turn them into believable myths. We each carry a responsibility to double check the facts. Or end up as repeating myths and hence become malleable pawns of the professional liars who prey on society.
