>> might 'wear' that if we were talking about a Communist state or dictatorship of the worst kind.
>> We are not, are we?
Depends on your point of view.
You aren't the only person to think that Wp even here (let alone in the Conservative Party in the heyday of apartheid). But there is an opposed view which I prefer because it's based on personal testimony. Brutal and violent treatment of blacks by white policemen wasn't just commonplace, it was absolute routine. If you were black in those days it would have looked like a dictatorship anyway of a quite bad sort if not the very worst... it's hard to make fine distinctions when you're being hit on the head with a truncheon and left bleeding in a cell for 72 hours.
I knew slightly a white South African woman intellectual who was murdered by the South African government with a letter bomb sent to her in Mozambique. Met other ANC members and hangers-on who were louche and spooky, even the ones like her who were communist. It could be a spooky scene, anti-apartheid at close quarters. But the cause was a sound one really, it blew all frivolity and time-serving into the weeds.
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