ANC top brass are well aware of sacrifices made during the struggle against apartheid. But having forgotten those heroes, today’s supplicants to a corrupted president might reflect on history’s many other inspirational examples.
There is a deep well of those who strived to save the Roman Republic. Like consul Thrasea, famous for his opposition to the insane emperor Nero, who had him murdered even though he had resigned. Or Cato who committed suicide rather than submit to dictator Julius Caesar. Plus hundreds more who chose the same fate in centuries since.
While the ANC worthies mull a looming Parliamentary vote of no confidence, it is also appropriate to repeat the most popular quotation of modern times, Edmund Burke’s immortal: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.”
Herman Griessel sent this in response:
Hope this finds you well…something else from Burke
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. – Edmund Burke, Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 – 1797)
