CHRIS ROPER: The politics of punching down | Financial Mail

The moral hole at the centre of political discourse grows ever deeper and darker. Even in democracies, the primary drive of political parties seems to be to make us less human, less empathetic, and more consumed with a hatred of each other.

Take the recent actions of the DA’s Cilliers Brink who, as part of his election campaign for Tshwane mayor, decided to stage a raid on suspected hijacked premises in search of undocumented migrants. And stage, of course, is the right word for this sort of performative nonsense. The raid itself was the usual bullyboy cruelty we’ve come to expect of politicians striving for relevance in a political mess of their own making, offering parodies of action to distract voters from the fact that they’ve failed us miserably for the past few decades. But it was one off-hand comment from Brink that should really horrify you.