Political anaesthesia: When democracies use history to numb the present

With an eye on a win later this year in local elections, South Africa’s ruling party kicked off 2026 by declaring it “the year of decisive action to fix local government.” The occasion was the African National Congress’s (ANC) 114th birthday celebration in Rustenburg, where President Cyril Ramaphosa told thousands of supporters: “Our forebears demonstrated bravery 114 years ago.

The forebears got top billing. Potholes, burst sewage pipes, and collapsed municipal budgets got a passing mention. With local government elections looming between 2 November 2026 and 30 January 2027, the ANC is leaning hard on its liberation credentials at the precise moment those credentials matter least. 

Voters in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, and Tshwane barely need a history lesson about 1912. They need functioning water treatment plants. But South Africa is not alone in this particular exercise. Across two continents, three democracies are using the past as a screaming cushion to absorb frustrations at present-day institutional failures.

Washington’s patriotic audit

The Trump administration frequently attempts to whitewash much of US history, making it hard to pick just one example.

Take this one, for example. In March 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14253, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The Orwell-sounding order directed Vice President Vance to oversee the removal of “divisive, race-centered ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution, America’s vast museum complex of 21 museums, 14 education centres, and the National Zoo.

The executive order singled out the National Museum of African American History and Culture for promoting content about systemic racism. It called the Smithsonian, once considered a “symbol of American excellence,” a vehicle for narratives that portray “American and Western values as inherently harmful.”

By August 2025, the White House sent a formal letter to the Smithsonian secretary announcing a “comprehensive internal review” of eight museums to “ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism.” All of this is timed to the July 4, 2026 Semiquincentennial, America’s 250th birthday.

The Organization of American Historians (OAH) responded with a direct accusation stating, “This is not a return to sanity. Rather, it sanitizes to destroy truth.” Art historian and lawyer Erin Thompson put it more bluntly in an interview with NPR’s A Martinez, saying, “You can’t turn an ugly history into a glorious one unless you’re not telling the truth.”

Mexico’s textbook war

In Mexico City, President Claudia Sheinbaum is running a different version of a similar operation, with a twist that exposes the real danger of turning history into a political monument.

On 14 February 2026, Sheinbaum declared that the nation’s controversial school textbooks “will not change.” The books, introduced under her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador as part of the “New Mexican School” curriculum, have been widely criticised by some academics for factual inaccuracies and ideological slant. Harvard education professor Fernando Reimers noted the curriculum “lacks clear goals and standards.”

Sheinbaum, however, wanted one modification: adding the role of women in Mexican history. It’s far from a radical proposition. Half the population was functionally absent from the national story, and the president of Mexico wanted to write them in. And considering that she’s the nation’s first woman president, it seems even more timely.

Marx Arriaga, textbook development director and self-described communist who had overseen the books under López Obrador, refused. So Sheinbaum fired him. Arriaga barricaded himself in his office and live-streamed his defiance before eventually being removed.

This is where Mexico’s story diverges from the American one. In Washington, a federal government is stripping history out, removing references to systemic racism, censoring Native American narratives at national parks, and demanding museums “celebrate American exceptionalism.” It’s a revision that runs in one direction: less truth, more comfort.

Sheinbaum was moving in the opposite direction. She was trying to add something true. And it took a public firing, a live-streamed standoff, and a week of political theatre to get it done. That is what happens when a government solidifies its history. It becomes impervious not only to critics but also corrections. Even right ones. Even from the president herself.

Chicago’s zero-sum game

For South Africans abroad who think this is all a little abstract, consider what happened in Chicago.

On 18 February 2026, the city announced that a statue of Mother Cabrini, the first American saint and patron of immigrants, would replace the Christopher Columbus statue removed from Little Italy’s Arrigo Park during the 2020 racial justice protests.

The Columbus removal was not arbitrary. His own journals document the enslavement of thousands of Taino people, forced labour for gold extraction, and dismemberment as punishment for those who failed to meet quotas. The Spanish Crown arrested him in 1500 for tyrannical rule. Within 60 years of his arrival, the Taino population collapsed from an estimated 250,000 to a few hundred. By 2020, activists across the United States were arguing that public monuments to Columbus amounted to celebrating the architect of a genocide.

Mother Cabrini won the replacement vote with nearly 40% of ballots cast. She did establish schools, orphanages, and hospitals serving Italian immigrants in Chicago before her death in 1917, after all. But the Italian American Human Relations Foundation called the process “cultural treason.” Their president said the Columbus statue would be “hidden away indoors, out of public sight.” A local restaurateur noted that neighbourhood old-timers “1000% want the statue back,” even as he called Cabrini “a good choice.”

Even when history is unambiguous, and when the replacement is a literal saint who served the same community, choosing which version gets the podium produces winners and losers. Public memory is a zero-sum game. Chicago, to its credit, played it fairly. Democracy doesn’t always win.

The liberation shield

Back in South Africa, the pattern plays out with a distinctly local flavour.

The ANC’s January 8 statement was delivered alongside delegations from ZANU-PF, FRELIMO, MPLA, and SWAPO, plus diplomats from Cuba, Venezuela, and Palestine. The guest list was the message: liberation solidarity, not municipal competence.

And as the party prepares for what could be its most consequential local elections since 1994, its campaign apparatus is saturated with struggle language. The ANC website still identifies itself as “South Africa’s National Liberation Movement.” The candidate selection guidelines approved by the ANC’s National Executive Committee speak of “rebuilding” and “renewal,” not service delivery benchmarks or water quality metrics.

The SACP, which is contesting these elections independently for the first time in decades, has accused the ANC of betraying the alliance’s foundational values.

The Madlanga commission into corruption and political interference broadcasts daily into South African living rooms. 

An April 2025 IRR opinion poll showed the DA surpassing the ANC in voter support for the first time in history.

The ANC response? Rinse and repeat: Forebears, struggle, oh, and 114 years of bravery. 

Anaesthesia

We tend to think of historical revisionism as something dictators do to bury the past. That’s true for the most part. But in 2026, three democracies are also doing subtler things.

“Patriotic” narratives in the US, “struggle” history in South Africa, and “Fourth Transformation” in Mexico. None designed to help citizens remember the 1770s, 1990s, or 1910s more accurately. They’re an analgesic—a little factual codein, if you will—slipped in to make citizens numb to the harsh realities of the 2020s. 

By turning the past into a “good vibes only” moment, the state reframes any critique of crumbling infrastructure, judicial overreach, or collapsing municipal services as an attack on the nation’s soul.

South Africans heading to the polls later this year may want to ask a simple question: is this candidate talking about your water, or their grandfather’s war? And then choose wisely. Elections have consequences. Ask the USA.