There is also a deeply unhealthy respect for authority. One hears it in the way people talk about the administration. To watch ostensibly independent public servants, broadcasters , frightened liberals and pliant functionaries stroking the party's G-spot is to see a form of political pandering so perverse it should be viewed only by consenting bureaucrats. The crime rate frightens many people, but crime may be a coded reference to race, so you stop releasing the figures. Murders get a lot of bad press, so you don't publish the numbers.
Rape is widespread.
Well then, let us declare it unpatriotic to talk about it. Road fatalities are shockingly high - let us no longer give them out. This being South Africa, such innovations are followed by a chorus of approval from party supporters. It has little to do with gratitude. It is a veiled warning to those who do not feel the required degree of appreciation.