by Rudi Buys
“A pack of hyenas circling a wounded prey”, is how President Ramaphosa framed those guilty of profiteering while increasing numbers of people die of Covid-19 - images that in popular culture are associated with evil and cowardice.
Commentators at odds with the president were quick to discredit the image and thereby the extraordinary measures to fight corruption. Hyenas form a necessary part of natural ecologies, they claimed, thereby implying that the president’s symbolic framing in actual fact revealed the reality that corruption is an integral part of ruling party politics.
Others declared the imagery as symbolic of the government’s strict stance against corruption, thereby implying that a new ethics underpin governance during the pandemic - a claim of sorts to an ethics of a special kind to deal with corruption of a special kind.
Naming those guilty of corruption as hyenas was not the focus of the president’s address, but it offered a way to translate a complex set of moral commitments to everyday language.
Not only were profiteers painted as evil cowards, but government by implication as good heroes.
Not only did the image become a representation of government action against corruption, but it established a clear divide in the public imagination between good and evil - in everyday talk citizens now must choose if they are hyenas or not.
This reveals the “power of rhetoric”, which refers to language techniques used to convince others of an argument by appealing to emotions, moral sensibilities and citizens’ sense of urgency in any given situation - tools of rhetoric that aim to provoke citizens to action rather than to simply express ideas artistically.
Whereas public readings of rhetorical methods often are negatively associated with dishonest politics, as a way to make sense of symbolic politics, rhetorical devices offer a useful reading of underlying moral codes - rhetoric as representative of different types and understandings of the ethics that underpin society.
In basic terms the “power of ethics” lie in its hidden role to determine for individuals and groups their sense of self and others, and what decisions are morally and socially desirable to make and enact.
In the main four approaches to ethics are at play when citizens and their collectives judge political decisions, especially in demanding situations.
The most familiar, “utilitarian ethics” considers decisions and conduct only in terms of consequences. When the outcome of a political project is good, then all matters relating to its decisions and performances also must be good, irrespective of what form the project took - the end justifies the means. “Deontological ethics” considers how just a duty or obligation is in terms of a set of rules to determine whether decisions or performances are good.
Rather than based on its consequences, the duty citizens perform must be good in itself to be ethically sound.
“Virtue ethics” foregrounds the character and moral commitments of citizens and their collectives - when citizens are good, so will be their decisions, projects and performances. “Social contract ethics” considers decisions and conduct in terms of the explicit and implicit social and political agreements collectives reach.
To behave in accordance or not with a consensus on what is good determines the goodness of the performances of the state and its citizens. Simply put, you become a hyena either by defending unjust projects with outcomes, dishonouring your duty to the people, enacting weak character or ignoring the consensus our Constitution represents.
* Rudi Buys is the executive dean of the non-profit higher education institution, Cornerstone Institute and editor of the African Journal of Non-profit Higher Education.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Cape Argus
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