A meme is an infectious chunk of information or prejudice that tells people what to think about subjects which they do not have the time, inclination or courage to weigh up for themselves. You can tell that a meme has become particularly virulent when it shows up as media cliché. Former president Thabo Mbeki, for example, is now memetically sealed as an aloof, pipe-smoking intellectual who coddled Robert Mugabe and whose apostasy on AIDS sent hundreds of thousands to a needlessly premature death.
Memes about Jacob Zuma and what his presidency means for the future of South Africa remain, mercifully, in a state of flux. It is still an open question which ones will come to dominate in the minds of northern thought leaders.
Easily the most seductive are those against which northern immune systems are already weak. The default master narrative has South Africa reverting, after the Golden Age of Mandela and the Silver Age of Mbeki, to what is assumed to be the brutish African norm. Memes that seem to support that storyline are highly infectious. Continue reading “Mbeki’s Fate Memetically Sealed. Zuma’s?”