Helen Zille’s new book, ‘#STAY WOKE: GO BROKE Why South Africa won’t survive America’s culture wars (and what you can do about it),’ will be published in the last week of April.
The author describes her objective, in part, as ‘not to deride Wokeness (but) to understand it better because it is, in my view, the biggest threat we face to achieving the promise of our Constitution, based as it is on Enlightenment values’. It is ‘also an attempt to support the moderate liberal and social democratic centre, comprising all races in our country, to find their voice and make themselves heard. If we do not do so, loudly and fearlessly, we will become complicit in the failure of our democratic project. Although the odds are currently stacked against us, success is still possible’.
The following extract – the first of four to be published by the Daily Friend in the run-up to the launch – draws on the introduction (A Note on the “Culture Wars”), and the chapter, Why SA Won’t Survive Wokeness.
The whole world knows how the Culture Wars are playing out in America, but its impact on other countries is less well understood.
In South Africa, it has been virtually ignored. This is a particular risk in our context, where popular “culture” merely regurgitates whatever the latest fads in America and Britain happen to be, ignoring our profoundly different context.
This book seeks to explain why, given our demography, the woke Left constitutes a far bigger threat to our constitutional democracy than the populist Right does.
And the key thesis of this book is that it would be a fatal mistake for the rational liberal Centre of South African politics to abandon the battle against Wokeness.
Liberals, worldwide including in South Africa, love to display their boldness in confronting the populist Right, but somehow slide-away when the need arises to confront the illiberal, authoritarian Left.
If we allow the “culture wars” to be waged between these two extremes, the moderate Centre will be eviscerated, with disastrous consequences for our country.
It is time for us to understand what is going on, flex our muscles, and fight back.
* * *
It is not uncommon these days for young South Africans to know all about political developments in the United States (through a woke prism), but absolutely nothing about events in their own country — even when these events are as shocking as the revelations about State Security slush funds being used by the ANC to buy off judges and journalists to support the ruling party.
Whatever the confluence of reasons, we have failed to learn the lessons of our own recent history. We have also failed to understand their implications. Otherwise we would, by now, be truly committed to non-racialism.
But the contrary is true. “Racial transformation” has become the ANC’s overriding policy imperative, not just one of several policy goals. The purpose of this focus, when one cuts through the hollow rhetoric, was to legalise corruption and enable the politically-connected to burrow into every capital flow in the country, in order to loot.
They pretended the goal was “broad-based black economic empowerment”. Anyone who ever believed that must surely, by now, realise they were conned.
Of course, colonialism and apartheid played the primary role in the structural exclusion of black South Africans from the political economy. That is a fact, and we have to redress that profound injustice.
But Wokeness and the re-racialisation of South Africa’s political economy is not the way to do it.
The list of … reasons backing up this categorical statement is not exhaustive. Neither is the list in priority order. It is merely in a sequence that makes logical sense. It is the combination of these factors that is killing South Africa’s prospects.
[First], Wokeness is an exercise in self-deception and misdiagnosis.
It claims that “Whiteness” is the core problem in South Africa. For the vast majority of people, this translates into the conclusion that whites are the core problem in South Africa, and have been since Jan van Riebeeck first put his foot on solid ground on the Southern tip of Africa in 1652. The corollary of this idea is that salvation lies in the removal of whites from all positions of power and authority, and for some, from the country as well.
Until that happens, the logic continues, South Africa will remain divided into two main groups: The Villains (comprising about 8% of South Africa’s population) vs. Everyone Else.
This simplistic diagnosis, an article of faith for South African Wokeness, is a massive barrier to addressing the real problems our country faces. It also prevents us from building a successful, inclusive future.
Wokeness has given the ANC the courage to reveal its true nature as a black nationalist organisation. Its commitment to non-racialism and independent institutions of state was always paper thin — a temporary compromise to move the country through the “first stage” of the bourgeois revolution, with the backing of Western powers, before moving onto the second stage.
On the 5th March 2012, the policy sub-committee of the ANC’s National Executive Committee announced the commencement of the “second stage”, seeking to bring the “National Democratic Revolution” (NDR) to its conclusion. Its fulfilment will mean the party will control the State and all its institutions; and the State will control the economy and society.
Jacob Zuma, president at the time, promised that “Radical Economic Transformation” imposed through all institutions of State, would eradicate the imaginary bogeyman “White Monopoly Capital”.
Before the transition to democracy, the ANC was always quite open about its intentions. As late as 1998, its policy guru Joel Netshitenzhe, who was later to become the head of the policy and coordination advisory unit in the presidency, wrote in the ANC mouthpiece that the aim of the NDR “is extending the power of the ‘National Liberation Movement’ over all levers of power: the army, the police, the bureaucracy, intelligence structures, the judiciary, parastatals, and agencies such as regulatory bodies, the public broadcaster, the central bank and so on”.
Enter Wokeness, 15 years later, to provide a perfect “moral” cover for rolling out the next stage of this plan, complete with a new lexicon, for its long-term trajectory.
While the National Party focused on the “displacement of blackness” from “white” South Africa, the Woke movement — which has a growing grip on the ruling ANC — focuses on the vanquishing of “whiteness”.
Both the ANC and the NP have in common their sense of a historic mission to redeem their people (racially defined) from oppression and subjugation. They are, in truth, two sides of the same historical coin. And both will leave equally dark stains on South Africa’s history.
Buy #StayWoke – Go Broke here: https://smarturl.it/StayWokeGoBroke
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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