The only thing for liberals to worry about is the possibility of being influenced by critics on social media.
The following is the text of my replies to an enquiry from Genevieve Quintal of Business Day about the role of liberalism in South Africa, and the role of the Institute of Race Relations in advancing its principles.
Her report, Is the IRR becoming a lobby group for a faction in the DA?, was published on 15 October.
Quintal had written to say: ‘I am writing an analysis for Business Day on the topic of liberalism and what it is. This is based on the discussion and debate that is being had now regarding the DA [Democratic Alliance] and this call to return to its liberal roots, and the IRR’s campaign #SaveTheOpposition. I was hoping to get some comment from you on a few aspects (of) this.’
Cardinal points in my responses to her questions were not included in that report. Here, then, are the answers I provided.
Question: The word liberal is being thrown around, people are saying they are classical liberals, democratic liberals etc. But what does it mean to be liberal, especially in the SA context?
Answer: In the South African context, the word would traditionally be taken to mean classical liberalism. That has certainly been the tradition of the IRR over its many decades. In our offices there is a billboard that reads, “We stand for classical liberalism – an effective way to defeat poverty and tyranny through a system of limited government, a market economy, private enterprise, freedom of speech, individual liberty, property rights and the rule of law”.
Question: Is there (a) place in democratic SA for pure liberalism, especially considering that our policies and our Constitution (are) based on social democratic ideas?
Answer: There is no contradiction between what the Constitution prescribes and what classically liberal thought prescribes. Even on the hoary question of redress, the classical liberal tradition in South Africa is quite clear, as is the IRR; our history demands it, the victims of apartheid deserve it, and it is good and right therefore that our society adopts policies that seek to empower people disadvantaged by that history. However, the liberal tradition demands that such redress takes place on the grounds of actual established socio-economic disadvantage and not on the grounds of race – the manner in which social grants are provided would be a very good example of the liberal approach. However, given that after more than 20 years of race-based redress policy very little has been done to fundamentally address inherited disadvantage, it is high time to change the basis of empowerment policy to reject racial nationalist ideas and reflect liberal ones. This would be very much in keeping with Constitutional requirements. Every government and party that has sought to lead South Africa along racial nationalist lines has or is failing and there is a lesson in that.
Question: With the fight between the DA and IRR, some have said that the IRR is moving away from being a liberal think tank … towards being an advocacy group. Do you agree with this assessment?
Answer: The IRR has always had a strong advocacy component. In her history of the IRR, published in 1980, Ellen Hellmann wrote about the “nature of the [IRR’s] work” being “to influence the minds of men”. That is exactly right. We seek not just to document the evolution of South African society but to influence the trajectory of that evolution in defence of property rights, a market economy, individual rights, freedom of speech and the rule of law.
Question: Has the IRR changed its strategy in the way it does things, and if so what is it?
Answer: Very little, considering that it is now 90 years old. Since its inception, it has used expert socio-economic analysis to make arguments in favour of policy reform.
Question: Is the IRR not worried that the perception on social media (arising from) ongoing fights (between) its members and members of the DA is hurting the credibility of the IRR and the cause you say the IRR is fighting for?
Answer: No. The only thing to worry about, I tell people, is the possibility of being influenced by critics on social media. Drawing flak is an excellent thing, as it means you are a having an effect. The advantage of being an independent policy group is that we can remain loyal to principles regardless of the flak we draw. In any event, we do enough polling to know where popular opinion lies. Most South Africans hold moderate to conservative policy views that align quite closely with the positions we advance. Outside of the chattering classes nothing on our billboard is objectionable to the majority of ordinary people. To quote Ellen Hellmann again, we “derive comfort from the fact that proposals that appeared at first heretical when expounded on [IRR] platforms have become commonplace today”.
Question: There has been criticism that the IRR is becoming a 24-hour commentary organisation, focusing on everyday politics and personalities, when it should be focusing on in-depth analysis of issues in the country. What would be your response to this?
Answer: It is nonsense. Over the past five years, the IRR published 329 in-depth policy papers and submissions of which a record 86 were published last year. Last year, those were in turn promoted via 858 self-authored opinion pieces in newspapers and at 510 briefings and meetings with third parties. The IRR advises an astonishingly broad spectrum of groups and firms with interests in South Africa and we are often surprised at the gulf that exists between the private and public engagements we have with some organisations and individuals. We have, also, made a considerable investment in social and digital media to get our arguments and ideas out of board rooms and policy making circles and into living rooms and onto the streets.
Question: What is your comment on people saying the IRR is a faction of the DA?
Answer: It’s a mistake many of our critics make – to think that we are concerned with or motivated by personalities or parties. Now and then, the personalities and parties who make policy become important to policy debates and this tends to excite people, but if the critics stood back from the noise and excitement of the moment, they would see an unbreakable thread of liberal principle running through all our actions.
Question: It is understood that the IRR had to change its funding model because big private donor funding had dried up. According some I spoke to, this created a patronage community, through Daily Friend. This allegedly became responsible for determining the IRR’s behaviour recently. Some believe it has become far more an advocacy version and driving issues that speak directly to its donor base in order to secure funding.
Answer: The IRR has always had a wide funding base and the balance of that base has changed over the decades as circumstances and technology changed. IDASA and the CPS – as well as the myriad of small entities in distress – are examples of what happens to think tanks that don’t adapt as circumstances and technology change. We have throughout been very careful about donor dependency – allowing 3-4 large contributors to use their financial heft to influence agendas, which is fatal. This is a weakness of large policy groups globally and of some in South Africa – especially those who are foreign-financed.
For the IRR, ideally no entity should contribute more than a very small proportion of revenue, so that we can jettison any that try to dictate agendas. Since becoming CEO five years ago, I have pursued a strategy of breaking donor dependency even further and positioning the IRR as essentially a South African crowd-financed think tank by attracting members who share our views.
That is a very important point; people join us because of the classical liberal views we espouse. This is in turn in line with growing our reach among ordinary people as part of our efforts to get out of boardrooms and into living rooms. This has long been a criticism of think tanks in South Africa, that they are ivory towers, aloof and irrelevant to ordinary people. I think that is a legitimate criticism and, as a result, we are trying to make our work more relevant to more people.
For 90 years we communicated in the main via writing things down and sending them to people to read, often long tomes. That still has its place – as our policy papers demonstrate – but we are learning to communicate the ideas in those papers faster, better, and smarter to a much wider audience.
The Daily Friend is an online newspaper we are experimenting with as a communications platform, using voice, written, and audio-visual tools and which has shown promising results and which may, if it reaches its 2019 targets, be launched in a big way early in 2020. The Big Daddy Liberty channel on YouTube is a similar effort. More such platforms are planned and will be rolled out in due course.
Frans Cronje is CEO of the Institute of Race Relations.