‘Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.’ The Phaedrus – a dialogue written by Plato around 370 BCE.
This sentiment captures the general response to the adoption of non-racial policies by the Democratic Alliance (DA) at its recent policy conference.
In his weekly From the desk of the President on 14 September Cyril Ramaphosa writes, in the context of Covid-19, of ‘hardworking and tenacious journalists… [who] shone light on excesses’, and goes on to say that, through their reporting, they have earned people’s trust and that ‘(as) a society, we owe the media our full support.’
‘The proliferation of fake news… on social media…has added to the urgency for more news that is accurate, fair and impartial,’ he says.
Why would Ramaphosa trumpet the virtues of a media which does so much to uncover the weaknesses of the government and of the African National Congress (ANC)? We owe the media nothing; trust and support have to be earned from the public. The media should be very wary of having its ego stroked by a president who almost never takes questions at press conferences.
It’s unlikely that the DA would consider the media so praiseworthy. Nowhere was this clearer than in responses to its adoption of policies that re-instituted non-racialism as underpinning its policies.
Specifically, the outrage arose over the DA’s removing race as a proxy for disadvantage and using disadvantage (economic) as a proxy for disadvantage.
As colleague Ivo Vegter said in DA derangement syndrome strikes SA media: ‘No matter what the DA does or says, you can be sure a chorus of journalists will declare it to be racist, to seek a return to Apartheid, or to live in the dark ages. None of it is justified, but the bias is deeply ingrained.’
Denialism
The charges against the DA include denialism, misreading of race and inequality, policy deceit, being ‘Trumpian’, and more.
Vegter says that in sacrificing its liberal principles in favour of appearing to be nothing more than a competent version of the ANC, the DA ended up being punished by voters in the 2019 elections.
Not only was this ‘more social liberalism’ an electoral disaster for the DA, but in an era of empowerment billionaires, wealthy tenderpreneurs, civil servants on million-rand salaries, and capture of the vast wealth of the state by crony capitalists, it is simply no longer tenable to claim race is a proxy for disadvantage.
Vegter observes pointedly that some ‘journalists [are] so wedded to their left-wing beliefs, so committed in their support for some idealised, non-corrupt, efficient ANC, and so resolute in their dislike for the DA, that it clouds their ability to fairly and rationally evaluate the DA’s policy positions on their own merits.’
In 1994 some of these commentators would probably have agreed that non-racialism was what the DA now says it is. It was uncontentious because the ANC implied that it was committed to this non-racialism too.
James Myburgh’s The Last Jacobins of Africa: The ANC and the making of modern South Africa– completed in 2007 as his doctoral thesis, but now published as a book – provides insight into the ardent pursuit by the ANC of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) and the redefinition of ‘non-racialism’ to mean the opposite of what it means.
Reverting to type
The ANC departed from its non-racialism in favour of African nationalism through its race-based empowerment policies. The party, which the world saw as unassailable, was in fact reverting to type – a socialist organisation pursuing two foundational concepts of modern ANC ideology based on Leninist theory: Colonialism of a Special Type and the NDR.
In 1997 the ANC drafted legislation enforcing ‘demographic representivity’ across all spheres and levels of endeavour. All institutions, beginning with the public service, would be required to strictly conform to the racial proportions of broader society. At the time, it was 75% black African, 13% white, 9% coloured and 3% Indian. Myburgh describes this idea as ‘mechanistic’.
‘Enforcing such outcomes would also clearly require unending racial discrimination against the country’s racial minorities. Yet this sudden reversal did not appear to cause any ructions in the liberation movement, certainly not of the sort one would expect from a party reneging on revered historic commitments. On the contrary, a 1998 DP [Democratic Party] document criticising this shift, The Death of the Rainbow Nation, was widely denounced from within the ANC and by their ideological allies in the media.’
‘At the same time “cadre deployment” was implemented where party loyalists would be placed in all centres of power in society. The media said almost nothing.
The ‘crushing’ of the Arms Deal Enquiry, as Myburgh calls it, alerted some to the ANC’s centralisation of power.
From the outset, the ANC had been working towards certain predetermined objectives through different stages. The assurances and concessions made in the early years of democracy were never meant to provide permanent obstacles to attaining those longer-term goals.
‘Largely unchallenged’
‘The ideology that has led South Africa close to the brink – colonialism of a special type – today is largely unchallenged,’ says Myburgh.
Myburgh says that ‘if you wish to understand the origins of South Africa’s current predicament, one needs to study the beginnings of the evils we witness today. Actions taken by the ANC, very soon after coming to power, account for a large proportion of the problems that the country is facing today. This relates especially to the dire quality of most government schooling, the dysfunctionality of the state, and the absence of effective checks and balances on government wrongdoing and the abuse of power.’
The current gargantuan levels of corruption are a direct consequence of decades of cadre deployment underwritten by empowerment legislation, policies and practices. These themselves flow from a ‘non-racial’ demographic-centred core philosophy of the ANC.
Myburgh writes: ‘In March 2000, the DP released a discussion document, All Power to the Party, which set out this policy more fully and outlined the degree to which ANC cadres now occupied almost all top-level positions in the state. In their reaction, Business Day declared in an editorial that the DP was “guilty of McCarthyism” for warning against cadre deployment and the capture by the ANC of all state institutions, including the supposed “watchdog” ones.’
The ANC now faces a Catch-22. If it is to really deal with corruption and cadre deployment, it would disintegrate because the vast legions of the corrupt are the glue holding the party together. But failure to deal with these problems could see it being voted out of power.
Below the poverty line
It is accepted that the poor still suffer the most from the consequences of past discrimination and exclusion. As interim leader of the DA John Steenhuisen reminds us, over 30 million South Africans live below the poverty line, and are excluded from the economy.
Section 9(2) of the Equality clause of the Constitution states: ‘Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms. To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.’
‘Categories of persons’ has the unedifying effect of allowing those who are as rich as Croesus – like Ramaphosa and his family – to benefit ad infinitum.
The ANC has failed to empower the poor. So what do we have to lose by identifying disadvantage itself rather than using race as a proxy?
A mainstream media hostile to the DA’s non-racism is unlikely to give it fair coverage leading up to to the 2021 election.
If you like what you have just read, subscribe to the Daily Friend