In our last week in Washington D.C., the first episode of Game of Thrones (GOT) aired, the series is currently in its seventh season. I can confirm, GOT fever is certainly in the air, and it’s contagious! Now, what does this have to do with my blog topic, SAWIP, South Africa, and the world for that matter is what you may be wondering. I’ll tell you.
Daenerys Targaryen (Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Realm, Lady Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons) - you know, that one. In one of the episodes, she gets into an intense discussion with her Hand, Tyrion Lannister (her closest advisor) in it she tells him, she does not plan to keep the system intact, where one terrible ruler follows another, killing and pillaging everyone and everything in their path. She says, “Lannister, Targaryen, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell, they’re all just spokes on a wheel, this one’s on top, that one’s on top, and on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground.” Tyrion replies, “It’s a beautiful dream, stopping the wheel, you are not the first person who’s ever dreamt it.” She then says, “I’m not going to stop the wheel, I’m going to break the wheel.”
This metaphor can be carried into our own society, the own structures and systems that we form part of - looking at the capitalist, accumulation centered society we find ourselves in, how do we deal with the ills of capitalism? Or the negative net externalities as it is referred to in economics? Do we become ‘Capitalists with Illusions’ like Chairman Tom Wheeler calls himself? Or disillusioned socialists? Social Democrats perhaps? Or do we ‘break the wheel?’. These are questions that I have been grappling with over the last few months, and quite honestly, I do not have the answers. But what I do know is, and one thing I SAWIP has definitely taught me, we cannot continue with business as usual. We need to break the wheel, we need to be less focused on the individual but centered on the community, we need in many ways (especially as the middle class), to be self-sacrificial, we need to commit ourselves to finding new pathways of development and advancement that does not have the modernist framework in mind. We can still respect values like democracy and individual liberties, but as Professor Mohamed Karaan stated, South Africa is a ticking time-bomb, perhaps many places in the world are. We need to deal with the ills of capitalism, colonialism and all the other ‘isms’ that continue to oppress and marginalise the most marginalised in our societies.
