Helen Zille’s new book, #STAYWOKE: GO BROKE Why South Africa won’t survive America’s culture wars (and what you can do about it), is being published this week.
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 edited extract – the last of four to be published by the Daily Friend in the run-up to the launch – draws on the chapter, What South Africans Can Do to
Resist Wokeness – Building a New Political Majority in South Africa
This is a hard and difficult road, to which I have devoted most of my adult life, because it is the only viable long-term solution compatible with our Constitution and the challenges of building a nation out of disparate and divided elements, after centuries of conflict.
While the need to find common ground across barriers is an immediate and pressing necessity in Southern Africa, it is also rapidly becoming a major challenge for the rest of the world.
Despite the resurgence of racial and ethnic nationalism, symbolised by international developments as divergent as America’s Culture Wars and Britain’s Brexit, the world is a shrinking place.
Almost every country and continent is going to have to find ways in which people of different cultures and backgrounds can live together in the same polity while respecting a foundational set of rules and conventions that ensure sustained progress and opportunities for everyone.
The history of successful democracies shows what the essentials are: A respect for constitutionalism and freedom within the rule of law; a capable State underpinned by a commitment to meritocracy; a societal culture of accountability; and a market-based economy, with social safety nets for the vulnerable.
It is these values and institutions that have enabled Western democracies to succeed and improve the opportunities and life chances of their citizens, while ensuring the resilience necessary to weather storms and resolve conflicts without resorting to authoritarian rule.
This approach is also entirely compatible with other responses to South Africa’s crisis, already highlighted in this chapter in various forms of self-reliance. Indeed, strong civil society organisations, such as the Solidarity Movement among Afrikaners, and the independent initiatives of the private sector, are necessary conditions for democracy’s success.
Building a new political majority in South Africa is an alternative to secession. It strongly supports greater autonomy for provinces, cities, and towns, so that those who have voted for an alternative to ANC rule can feel the positive impact of their decisions. This is a battle well-worth engaging and entirely winnable.
The more the ANC’s racial nationalism fails, the more important and possible it becomes to demonstrate that alternative policies can work. This requires the greatest possible autonomy for cities and towns, and the one province the ANC does not govern.
It also requires a highly competent alternative. Lessons from other African countries teach us that the “liberation parties” usually wither away, but that their electoral replacements often turn out to be as bad – or even worse. That is why the greatest threat to a country’s long term prospects occurs when the opposition becomes as bad and as venal as the government.
Ultimately voters must inevitably learn the hard way, through experiencing the consequences of their decisions. Of course, the foundation stones that underpin functional democracies are not value-free or culturally agnostic. They are rooted in the history of Western Enlightenment, and we have to be bold enough to say so. In complex plural societies, they are often in conflict with traditional systems, where people are accountable to, and dependent on, the favour and patronage of their leaders, rather than the other way around.
This fundamental incompatibility is one of the aspects currently bedevilling South Africa’s prospects. It is also one of the factors driving the woke form of “identity politics” and its sinister objective of convincing people that independent, democratic institutions of state are alien to their culture.…
Despite this, I have faith that the innate sense of fairness and justice manifested by so many in our country, will constitute the “critical mass” required to enable constitutionalism to triumph in the end.
South Africa matters. Its success is not only important to its people, but to the African continent. And the world.
We are at the cutting edge of what a complex, plural society looks like. If we fail to find a way of living together in a free society (rather than a fear society), the challenge will not evaporate. It will continue to haunt a growing number of countries across the globe.
That is why our prospects arouse such interest and hold such significance.
Our success matters. It requires facing facts, having the difficult conversations, understanding what freedom means, why it is important, and how to nurture and defend it. It also means being ready to fight for it, when necessary.
Wokeness is making it increasingly difficult to do these basic, essential things. Which is why I wrote this book. If Wokeness wins, whatever it is called by then, at least I want to know that I made every effort to raise the alarm.
If the moderate non-racial liberal constitutionalists manage to emerge triumphant, we could be an enormous resource for the Western world facing the same challenges.
As always, I believe that in South Africa, The Worst will not happen, because enough of us continue to work for The Best.
Buy #StayWoke – Go Broke here: https://smarturl.it/StayWokeGoBroke