Mbeki may have been the most moral of the ANC Elite - and now he's gone

Mbeki then went on to quote George Soros: “Unsure of what they stand for, people increasingly rely on money as the criterion of value. What is more expensive is considered better … The cult of success has replaced a belief in principles. Society has lost its anchor…” - Thabo Mbeki

NVDL: It really is true that money has become the ultimate barometer of a person's worth, and of course money can be ill-gotten. It's troubling too that women want men with money. Someone recently said to me - 'Men are all the same; as long as I find one with money, that's fine.' Quite a sad indictment of her and the conundrum which we're faced with. I believe the reason this has become so common-place is thanks to the cult of celebrity. People watch movies, see celebrities on TV and decide that sort of life, that posturing is 'normal' and exemplary, and right. It's not. It's window dressing. It's a con. It's all artifice. I'm a photographer - I know.

clipped from www.thetimes.co.za The ANC knew about this but still appointed him its spokesman last year. The story of Carl Niehaus is a tragedy foretold. Delivering the Nelson Mandela Memorial Lecture at the University of Witwatersrand on July 29 2006, the then president, Thabo Mbeki, spoke of the ‘‘demons embedded in our society”. His lecture is a towering achievement that should be read by everyone who wants to understand what the ANC is going through today. “And thus has it come about that many of us accept that our common natural instinct to escape from poverty is but the other side of the same coin, on whose reverse side are written the words — ‘At all costs, get rich!’ “What this means is that many in our society have come to accept that what is socially correct is not the proverbial expression — ‘Manners maketh the man’ — but the notion that each one of us is as excellent a human being as our demonstrated wealth suggests!”