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In April 1887, Catholic historian Lord Acton wrote a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton which included the memorable line: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The term is used so often nowadays, you may well have applied it yourself.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___But according to Harvard Business School prof, historian Richard Tedlow, Acton’s quote only tells half the story. This student of American business tycoons says he believes “Power does more than corrupt. It does something more subtle and insidious. The word I choose to describe the impact of power is that it ‘deranges’.” Strikes a chord, doesn’t it?
Such derangement, Prof Tedlow adds, is not the fault of yes-men that surround the powerful. Instead: “It is caused by the courtier who is clever or frightened enough not to be detected. These are the people who arrange a world of continual approbation for the person of power.
“They see to it that he or she never loses time in a traffic jam and never has cream with coffee if milk is preferred. The courtier makes perfect for the powerful those little things that bedevil normal folk. In the process they abstract the powerful from the real world.“ Think ANC ministers, Lockdowns and Loadshedding. Join the dots. Roll on 2024.
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Two-year-old ActionSA continues to gather momentum, helped by a laser-like focus on a mission to eject the ANC from ruling South Africa in 2024 – and for it to have no role whatsoever in deciding the country’s future path. During this in-depth interview with Alec Hogg of BizNews, ActionSA’s leader, former businessman Herman Mashaba, shares his party’s belief that the country’s salvation lies in convincing dystopian citizens to regain hope and to participate in the democratic process. To this end it has 180 full-time volunteers pounding the pavements and signing up previously unregistered voters. In this must-listen interview with the man who is among the contenders to become SA’s president after the 2024 national election, Mashaba addresses the Eskom disaster, Knysna, DA “propaganda”, being shocked by Carte Blanche’s expose’ of Agricultural Schools, and more.
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