THE Gupta empire, it's written, spanned much of the Indian subcontinent from about 320 to 550 CE. A peaceful, prosperous civilisation, it brought together advancements in science, architecture, philosophy, religion, art and literature to form what is now considered Hindu culture.

The game of chess was said to have originated here, as did the world's first base ten numerical system. During this time it was also first proposed that the earth was not flat but round and rotated about its own axis. Thanks to the Guptas' beneficence, the scholar Vatsyayana, fired by stirrings in the trousers department, wrote the Kama Sutra, the well-known knobbing manual.

Those Guptas, of course, are not to be confused with the lot currently based in the Johannesburg suburb of Saxonwold. All they've given us thus far is The New Age, a newspaper of unswerving devotion to the ruling party. In return for its grovelling ovine fealty, the publication has, at least according to Helen Zille, been handsomely rewarded, and it is not surprising that the Western Cape premier has called for a judicial inquiry into its affairs. 

There is, it seems, substantial justification for such an inquiry. Government, Zille has alleged, has spent at least R64.6 million on the rag in the last two years. 

And journalism professor Anton Harber has pointed out that apart from the close scrutiny warranted by an editorial policy of shameless sycophancy -- particularly in a newspaper started by the friends and bankers of President Jacob Zuma -- there is the not inconsequential matter of The New Age's refusal to join the Audit Bureau of Circulation. The reason for this, Harber wrote recently, was that the newspaper may be embarrassed about its poor sales, and wanted to keep its circulation figures hidden. 

Thus, when the ANC's national spokesman, Jackson "Slugger" Mthembu, suggests -- as he did this week, in one of the several broadsides fired at Zille by the ruling party -- that The New Age has a "national distribution footprint and coverage" and "covers all nine provinces . . . in one publication without exception" he is being a wee bit selective with the facts. 

Without audited sales figures, Slugger's claims amount to little more than piffle. Little wonder then that the bulk of the newspaper's advertising -- a whopping 77% of it, according to the DA -- comes from government. Nobody in the private sector would pay for space in a publication that, for all intents and purposes, was dumped by the truckload in government offices across the land.

Naturally, as we're well aware here at the Mahogany Ridge, there is not much chance of any sort of investigation into the newspaper. The reasons for this are obvious.

The ruling party's antipathy towards Zille has now mestastised into full-blown hatred. Its loathing is so inchoate, the ANC is no longer capable of reason. Zille could one day loudly declare that two and two equals four, but the ANC and most of its allies would respond that two and two is actually three. (Cosatu would then march and shortly afterwards this would be raised to five.)

One potentially harmful aspect of this sort of petulance is that it undermines what would otherwise be regarded as a matter of some importance and instead presents it as the petty, bitchy behaviour that is so characteristic of our public life. We don't have a national discourse so much as a national disparagement. Frankly, most people are sick of it and just couldn't care less. 

And who knows what to think anyway? It was Bertrand Russell, a Ridge regular back in the day, who once said, "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." 

But onto more pain -- Human Rights Watch's annual report on the country's worrying drift towards what University of Cape Town constitutional law professor Pierre de Vos has described as a "securocracy" and the "problematic impulses" of 1980s apartheid, and the rise of the secretive intelligence agencies in our affairs.

The report suggests we have gone backwards in safeguarding human rights. In particular it highlights the Marikana massacre, labelling it "one of the worst death tolls in violent protests since 1994". 

But there were other "democracy-strengthening" areas of concern, according to HRW. They include the threat to freedom of expression posed by the Protection of State Information Bill, the state's failure through corruption and poor leadership to meet public demands for fuller realisation of social and economic rights, and the reintroduction of the Traditional Courts Bill which would effectively drag rural women and children back to the 19th century.

Russell's words ring truer than ever. Doubt and indecision are here to stay.

This article first appeared in The Weekend Argus.

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