Enter the jargon: the intertextual rhetoric of Radical Economic Transformation following the logic of Demosthenes’s oratory

Abstract

This paper considers the timing and entry into public discourse of ‘Radical Economic Transformation’ as a concept that is open to deliberate misinterpretation in the media. Whilst, as the title suggests, it is necessary to distil the content signified by its rhetorical signposts, the diverse uses to which ‘radical economic transformation’ is being put by the media, government and researchers requires examination relative to parameters of debate set by the Greek orator Demosthenes’s thesis in his Against Meidias, during times of political crisis in Athens Macedonian expansion. Similarly, in the wake of oligarchies and deepening economic inequality along racial lines, Jacob Zuma’s Radical Economic Transformation (RET) was intended to be a bulwark against further expansion, exploitation and pauperization. In its intention, the rhetoric RET signposted a pro-poor intervention for ownership, management and control of the economy in favour of all South Africans. If the exordium is whether ‘Radical Economic Transformation’ should be embraced, then the debate takes stock of the observation by Mark Swilling that while there is a clear need for ‘radical economic transformation,’ there are concerns that ‘this is being used as an ideological smokescreen to mask the rent-seeking practices of the Zuma-centred power elite’ (Bhorat et al., 2017). In the media, Schutte argues that Radical Economic Transformation is part of a ‘distorted discourse [which] is the weapon of choice [at a time when] empty rhetoric is served up on Orwellian platters’. Following the logic of Demosthenes, the debate around the rhetoric of Radical Economic Transformation demands and deserves to be tested against legality, justice, expediency, practicability, decency and consequences.