Alec Hogg: Same, same – The early US Republic and Democratic SA
By Alec Hogg
While supping with an American friend, we got talking how democracies need time to mature. Strange things happened in the early years of his own Republic, he said. My reference on such matters, Paul Johnson's History of the American People, provided some interesting replications in the new South Africa from the USA of the late 1700s.
Take the Presidents. America's first was the tall, iconic, hugely popular George Washington – the Nelson Mandela of his country. The US's second President, John Adams, was "cantankerous, unloved and quarrelsome". Other similarities with SA equivalent Thabo Mbeki was being long groomed for the post which, Johnson writes, he was "superbly, perhaps uniquely qualified intellectually".
Then consider number three. To get elected, America's Thomas Jefferson struck deals with shady characters, including deeply corrupt Aaron Burr. That compromised his ability to lead. Also, although a passionate idealist, Jefferson was "a fastidious devotee of all life's luxuries from claret to concubinage." Sound familiar?
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