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Cape Town - South African politics needs to go on the "Noakes diet" and become more meaty, Times Media editor-at-large and author Ray Hartley said on Thursday.
"One of the problems of South Africa is that there are too many carbohydrates in our politics. We sort of feast on the world cup victory and then we are on this sugar high," he told the Cape Town Press Club.
"And then of course the glycaemic problem kicks in and then we are as depressed as anything."
Local sports scientist Tim Noakes has been outspoken on his high-fat, moderate protein, low carbohydrate diet.
Hartley said the political landscape needed more protein or meat, in the form of tough and substantial policy decision-making.
"We no longer have a political machine that does that."
He said the current dispensation of President Jacob Zuma was a self-fulfilling bureaucracy that served the elite and did not face the people.
The country was at a crossroads amid growing, dangerous sentiment against the constitution.
Hartley said it was a fantastic Constitution but it was ragged, becoming frayed around the edges and being unravelled by some very powerful voices.
Politicians should move away from a linear way of solving problems and towards a more "Eastern mindset" which accepted the ebb and flow of problems.
Hartley has written a book, titled Ragged Glory - The Rainbow Nation in Black and White, which details
the successes and failures of the ANC's rule after 1994.
