Twelve bodies in Johannesburg. A manhunt. Another mass shooting in a country that has become a byword for violence.
And what do we hear from the chattering classes? The usual litany: stricter gun laws, more policing, a call for unity. But let us step back.
Compare this to the late Roman Republic, where bread and circuses masked a society rotting from within. South Africa’s problems are not merely legislative; they are civilisational. The structures of order decay when the moral and intellectual elite fail to articulate a coherent vision of society.
We are in the autumn of the West, and Johannesburg is just one leaf falling. The manhunt will find someone. The news cycle will move on.
But the rot remains. And we, the opinion-makers, will have failed again, drowning in platitudes while the darkness deepens.
