How politics destroys the soul

There’s a dictum which, if I’m not mistaken, is ascribed to Franz Kafka: In the battle between yourself and the world, support the world. I’ve always been troubled by this outlook on life, and have easily chosen Christ’s warning against the world. The side I wish to choose in battle with myself is that of God.

The concern I have about my battle with the world grew intense in the last few months when I found myself being seduced deeper and deeper into politics. If there’s one thing we all know for sure, it is that politics are dirty. That does not mean good people do not exist among politicians, but a good character is put against a conniving wave of bad tactics, corrupt tendencies and lies in politics. The question is why good people think they can make a difference by entering politics.

I have a grudging respect for politics, the idealism behind people who want to make a difference through public service. Yet I have a cynical low expectation of what can really be achieved beyond the rhetoric and high-flying words when individuals of empty character tend to raise to the top. Again, this does not mean there are not people of genuine integrity within politics, but they are few and far between. Worse still, and this is of greatest great concern to me, is the peril one’s soul is subjected to by success in politics. And yet, if the world is to change, people of good will cannot give up the realm of public service to the worst of us.

I believe that is what is driving the new politics in the South African scene — people who had never thought of a political career are coming forward, asking how they can be involved in the process of changing our political and civic culture. These are the people who have felt it in their guts each time they watched the dishonesty and lack on integrity demonstrated by our public representatives on TV or any other public space, and thought that surely we deserve better than this. These are the people who are not only sick of endemic corruption in our public service, but also angry that our economic system seems consistent in serving only the needs of the capitalised at the expense of the poor. I wanted to be counted among these.

Since I have become involved in politics, I have noticed a great inherent danger to myself, that which is at the heart of the devil’s temptations to our Lord: “If you worship me, I’ll give you the world…”

Most of the people one works with in politics do not have a God-centred outlook on life. You find yourself always in the minority in things that seem small to them but mean a world to you. Because you don’t want to appear as though you are morally posturing, you give in and compromise. Every day you observe yourself making one compromise after the other to please what is understood to be the progressive spirit of the times. Every day you wonder to yourself where it will end, this gaining of the world at the expense of your soul. And so you stand, detached at the mix of it all, wondering where best to plant the seed.

What I feel about politics can best be described by a Germanic adjective: trostlos. It expresses best how I feel about politics, perhaps because of its ambiguity because it can incorporate many meanings. Some people render it as “comfortless”, which is how I feel mostly about my situation. But you can render it to mean “devoid of consolation”, which gives a spiritual angle. You wouldn’t be wrong either if you rendered it “hopeless”, “dismal”, “desolate” or “cheerless”. Luckily, things have not gone as far as that for me.

Certainly “goodness is in a certain sense comfortless”, another Kafka dictum. “In much wisdom is much grief,” counsels the book of Ecclesiastes. Inshallah, we’ll be a good people, but being good is not enough for this world, we’ve to be shrewd like snakes, and harmless as doves. We grow in our understanding of Christ.