Inside Report with Basch: Popular politics

It’s what the cool kids are doing. Skateboarding (for example) was the “pop culture “ of the 90’s. Gleaming the cube, Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer’s pants, the running man in all pop culture.

Understanding the concept of pop culture is important when looking at our political sphere today, because we have moved into a space I call pop politics. Pop politics is all about popularity, doing what the masses want.

Take EFF for example, they are acting like a group of teenagers in parliament, being disruptive and disobedient. Breaking the rules by wearing overalls and maids’ outfits, preventing debates with chanting.

Pop politics – they speak to their market space, the disenfranchised youth that value rebellion over uniformity even at the cost of progress. A teenager will burn it all to the ground, because they are anti-establishmentarian by nature.

It becomes a problem when the ruling party adopts a pop politics view of the world. Firstly, the concept of ruling party is pop politics 101, the ANC was the liberating party, taking the oppressed masses out of apartheid and as such have become the ruling party.

And rule they do, even at the cost of rate payers – mostly at the cost of rate payers. It is far more important to be seen to be ruling than to actually get it right. What I would like to see is the leading party, a party that will lead this country and not try to rule it.

Then there is the opposition party, which by definition means that they will oppose. This has become the calling card, the watchdogs, the prefects which does not always help either, because the ruling party will not listen to the opposition party, because they hate being told what to do, and in the end the problems remain and the community suffers.

I would rather like to see the opposition become the objective party and look at things objectively, and not just oppose for opposition sake, or to be seen doing that.

We are in a phase of our history where we are going to be challenged, as a nation, as communities and as individuals. Climate change is real, electricity crisis is here and rising living costs are pressing.

What we need is not pop politics. What we need is strong politics, the ability to do what is right because it is right, not just because it is popular.

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