Quote of the week
Trump’s electoral fiction floats free of verifiable reality. It is defended not so much by facts as by claims that someone else has made some claims. The sensibility is that something must be wrong because I feel it to be wrong, and I know others feel the same way. When political leaders such as Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan spoke like this, what they meant was: You believe my lies, which compels me to repeat them. Social media provides an infinity of apparent evidence for any conviction, especially one seemingly held by a president.
The New York Times
“Sihamba noMsholozi, Sihamba noPresident (We are going with Msholozi, we are going with the president)”, Cosatu delegates sang on the closing day of their 11th national congress. The song indicated that the delegates supported Jacob Zuma’s (Msholozi is his clan name) bid for a second term as ANC leader at the ruling party’s national conference in Mangaung in December. Then, later on Thursday, they bestowed the “worst employer” award to Aurora Empowerment Systems, whose directors include Khulubuse Zuma, the president’s nephew, for breaking “every record in terms of dodging responsibility” and “starving workers”. It was one of many bizarre contractions of the four-day Cosatu congress, which the federation’s re-elected president Sdumo Dlamini opened on Monday. – Ranjeni Munusamy on Daily Maverick
