Page 111 - Monocle Quarterly Journal Vol 1 Issue 1 Q4

person character that had been created by one of the authors in the class. e character committed a violent murder for no apparent reason. What naturally came up in the discussion were the two great murders of western literature. e rst being the murder committed by the protagonist in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the second being the murder committed by the protagonist in Albert Camus’s e Outsider. e rst murderer was Raskalnikov, who murders the Jewish money lender with the view that the money he would take from her, which would assist him with his studies, would ultimately be of far greater use to society than if it were left with the Jewish money lender. e rest of the novel is spent with him evading the law and going through some kind of sense of guilt, but not necessarily the realisation of what he had actually done.
e second great murder of western literature is the protagonist in Albert Camus’s e Outsider, who has lost his mother, and is walking along a beach when he gets into a minor argument with someone he knows and shoots him. ere is no particular guilt that we sense from the rst person narrative. ere is no particular remorse that is felt when he is nally captured and imprisoned. What is particularly disturbing about the novel is that the reader is left feeling complicit with a character, to whom you have grown very close, who thinks clearly but without any real sense of empathy for other human beings.
In the discussion with Prof. JM Coetzee over whether one could in fact have a main protagonist that could commit a violent murder without remorse Prof. JM Coetzee uttered words I will never forget: “Evil can be, and often is, quite banal”.
Now ask yourself why Pravin Gordhan is being attacked so vehemently by Zuma? Why the Guptas are using the organs of South African state craft for assets that have not been earned, but are being grabbed from under our noses? And the purpose is very simple. It’s about money. It is a raid of our country taking place within our very land, in front of us. While the country is burning, while a generation is being lost, while learners are su ering, these folk, these powerful folk, are ghting with each other over billions of dollars of assets that, actually, belong to us.
Remaining Private Entities
ere will probably never again be a better example of why banks should not be utilities, and remain private enterprises. If the current dealings – this embarrassment to the democracy of South Africa – were to be executed in a planned, logical form, it would be dangerous.
“While the country is burning, while a generation is being lost, while learners are su ering, these folk, these powerful folk, are ghting with each other over billions of dollars of assets that, actually, belong to us.”
BANKING: the lASt BAStIoN of democRAcy
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