2 + 2 = 5: Equality of outcomes is behind South Africa’s decline

In his last film role before dying of a brain haemorrhage, Richard Burton played O’Brien (a sinister agent of the Inner Party) in the 1984 film adaptation of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948).

In the Ministry of Love, O’Brien systematically tortures Winston Smith (played by John Hurt), breaking his grip on reality. Strapped to a torture apparatus, Winston clings to the arithmetic fact that two plus two equals four. Burton, as the party man O’Brien, chillingly insists, in his distinctive Welsh voice, “If the Party says it is five, then it is five” – as he turns up the dial, sending Winston howling with pain.

When O’Brien holds up four fingers and asks how many there are, Winston initially says “five” to appease him. O’Brien rejects this: “No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four.”

The true horror of the Party’s totalitarianism lies not in forced confessions or outward obedience, but in the demand for inner conversion. The victim must genuinely embrace the absurdity of the Party’s “truth.” Power must triumph over objective proof; the soul itself must surrender to the collective delusion.

For Orwell, the erasure of objective reality by those in power is the ultimate dystopian nightmare. This idea echoes in postmodern thinkers like Foucault and Derrida, who view truth as constructed and enforced through power and discourse. But where Orwell warns against it, many postmodernists celebrate the dissolution of independent truth as liberating – especially for marginalised groups challenging western hegemony.

Equality of outcomes in South Africa

South Africa’s continuing crisis mirrors the Party’s insistence on “two plus two equals five.” The root cause – a leftist shift in thought – has been noted by the political scientist Francis Fukuyama: “The left continued to be defined by its passion for equality, but that agenda shifted from its earlier emphasis on the conditions of the working class to the often-psychological demands of an ever-widening circle of marginalized groups.”

By “psychological demands” Fukuyama refers to the lingering sense of inferiority felt by many whose ancestors were colonised, conquered, or enslaved by the West. This unease intensifies when such groups “come second” to white westerners. At the same time, mainstream white western opinion has increasingly aligned itself with the perspective of the “victim.” Many white westerners psychologically project themselves into the experience of those who resent them, becoming guilt-ridden and self-hating; or perhaps angry at conservative whites for refusing to play their nihilistic game.

In South Africa, black citizens now control the state – a major psychological victory that addresses the trauma of colonial defeat. Yet the continued success of a skilled white minority in South Africa prevents full “equality” in Fukuyama’s psychological sense. Meeting this demand would mean upending reality itself – making two plus two equal whatever the “comrades” declare.

South Africa’s leaders, scarred by decades of Afrikaner domination, have adopted a strikingly similar approach to apartheid’s solution for the “poor white problem”: creating sheltered employment through a huge, state-funded bureaucracy to elevate a group into the middle class. The civil service (excluding state-owned enterprises) employs about 1.2 million people, with average salaries around R50,000 per month. The public-sector wage bill consumes roughly 12% of GDP – among the highest proportions globally – yet delivers crumbling infrastructure and institutional ruin (featured image of the Palace Barracks in Simon’s Town illustrates this reality.

Despite this, the narrative persists: with just a few more training courses, anti-corruption drives, or professionalisation efforts, this bloated, overpaid structure – an artificial black middle class – could function like a “normal” civil service in a normal country.

It’s conceivable the ANC could choose a pragmatic, pro-business, non-anti-white leader like Patrice Motsepe, who might shrink the state, unleash the private sector, and enact real reforms. Yet an existential slow torture continues: the pressure to adopt postmodern western lies – insisting white colonialism is the sole ruin, white supremacy worse than any other, and that replacing white skills with black ones will succeed if only we believe hard enough.

In a majority-black country, this denial is not a luxury but a necessity for psychological “emancipation.” Objective reality – seen in everyday experience, history, and outcomes – must be erased. Black and white must be declared equal, even if the country – Africa’s outstanding exception in modern functionality – is reduced to dust. This is the quiet horror: a nation torturing itself into embracing what eyes, evidence, and common-sense reject – all in the name of power over proof.