Lex Libertas, the think tank founded by Dr Ernst Roets, is partnering with the New York Young Republicans Club to bring the issue of farm murders to the attention of the United States’ public and policymakers.
Right to its nerve centre, actually: the plan is to erect a display of 3 000 white crosses on the National Mall in Washington, DC. If they can pull this off, it will have a claim to being the most prominent exhibition of South Africa’s politics in that country since the newly released Nelson Mandela was received by a ticker tape parade in New York City in June 1990.
No doubt, this will garner a great deal of impassioned attention, quite probably more so in South Africa than in the United States. This wouldn’t be the first time: as relations between the two countries deteriorated over the past year, the role of interests and lobby groups outside formal state systems has come into focus. Much of this has revolved around the role of Afrikaner-focused bodies, such as Afriforum and Solidarity (where Roets has his origins), and how they have supposedly manipulated the American government into taking a hostile stance vis-à-vis South Africa.
Last year, treason charges were laid against by the uMkhonto weSizwe Party against Afriforum, for what it had allegedly communicated in the United States, while President Cyril Ramaphosa voiced something similar in January. The government, he indicated, would be investigating whether organisations lobbying abroad were harming the country’s interests, and hinted at legal consequences should this be the case.
Personally, I don’t see this amounting to very much, and not only because I don’t think the criticism has been entirely honest – neither Solidarity nor Afriforum has claimed a “white genocide”, despite the relentless attribution of this position to them – but because it rests on a faulty assumption about how international and cross-border politics work today.
International relations are often perceived as being the exclusive function of states; unsurprisingly, since this is traditionally a form of politics in which executives – governments, kings and potentates – use the powers and tools at their disposal to interact with one another. Implicit in this is the idea that at this level, the varying components of a polity are aggregated into a single entity. Where this is undertaken by an absolute monarch, it might suffice to simply declare a position. Much the same is the case in authoritarian societies.
Pluralistic polities work according to a vastly different logic. It’s well established that different arms of government conduct what amount to their own foreign policies – cities, for example, play a significant global role, not always in harmony with their national governments. But foreign engagements now take place freely beyond halls of official power. Different interest groups disagree, argue and compete about policy and governance in all spheres. Few positions, if any, can be assumed to be permanent and unchanging; rather there is a constant process of negotiation and contestation. This is as much the case in matters that cross borders as it is for those that are strictly domestic.
Nowadays, there are in any event few matters that do not in some way cross borders. Economic and cultural systems are hardwired into one another across the world. This has altered behaviour and incentives: where once lives may have been lived within a set of borders, they are now visibly affected by developments elsewhere. Governments, and particularly those that claim to draw their legitimacy from the consent of their people, have to factor this in; they value the respect and affirmation of governments and publics elsewhere, and the moral currency it confers in global fora. This is a diplomatic asset.
All of this means that neither a given set of challenges nor the means to address them are now necessarily confined to individual countries, and still less to the national governments that preside over them. The tools available are now global, and the mantra that South African problems will be solved by South Africans (or whatever country one might substitute) is at best partially true.
This is even more so when governments show themselves disinterested or incapable of dealing with their domestic problems. Readers will recall that towards the beginning of the year, Israeli diplomats visited the Eastern Cape through the offices of the (controversial) AbaThembu King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, billing this as a mission to assist a deprived area to deal with its water crisis.
The South African authorities responded by expelling the Israeli chargé d’affaires, also blaming him for inappropriate social media posts. The visit, the South African side said, was a violation of diplomatic protocol. In this, formally, they may have had a point. But the Israelis had demonstrated something that to my mind embodies contemporary international relations: it’s not just a matter of state-to-state links. And where a government fails its own people, they will look elsewhere for assistance. In an open society, this need not be within the country’s borders.
This matter is, incidentally, given a wrinkle of additional complexity by the fact that the Israelis were working with a senior traditional leader. Traditional leadership retains enormous practical significance in the life of millions of South Africans. Early expectations that it would whither in the face of modernity, or retreat into a ceremonial role, have not materialised. Traditional leaders themselves have aggressively guarded their authority, and political parties have accommodated themselves to this. They were long a staple of the political reach of the Inkatha Freedom Party, and after the democratic transition, they became integrated into the ANC’s systems. But there is no denying that they constitute a form of power that sits somewhat outside the constitutional mainstream. King Dalinyebo could probably make a respectable case that he is merely acting according to the precedent set over years that traditional leadership has extensive latitude and discretion to conduct its own affairs.
As for his subjects – for monarchs have subjects, constitutional states have citizens – one can only imagine that they would be relieved to receive the water that the country’s Constitution guarantees as a right, but which deficient governance has failed to provide. It’s a question that might be open to empirical investigation, but I would imagine that its provenance would be of less interest to the residents of King Sabata Municipality than to the leadership of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation. And I suspect that that is precisely what DIRCO would be concerned about.
Indeed, DIRCO claimed that the Israelis had “systematically undermined the trust and protocols essential for bilateral relations”: the reality is that there no trust exists, and South Africa has long made it abundantly clear that it has no interest in bilateral relations between the two governments. It doesn’t seem to have understood that relationships don’t always go through central governments anymore. This must be intensely frustrating.
This, though, is something that Lex Libertas has understood, and it is merely following in the footsteps of numerous other activist groups that have taken their causes global, with varying degrees of success. The environmental movement has long done this. Say what you want about Greta Thunberg (and I don’t have many compliments), she was a photogenic focal point for the movement across the world, a celebrity performance activist who was eagerly welcomed and emulated.
Those looking for a precedent needn’t look abroad. South African activists have energetically engaged in matters concerning the wider world. The fate of the Palestinians is a matter of especially ardent advocacy, often presented as nothing less than a moral duty with no room for disagreement. Indeed, government ministers have been involved in encouraging this themselves, outside official channels. The ANC even more so. Some of the same voices that condemn Afriforum, and who would likely be in the front line of denouncing Lex Libertas. have taken up this cause enthusiastically. It’s typically described with the evocative moniker “solidarity”.
Nor has activism necessarily always involved supporting causes favoured by the government. There was considerable agitation across the world over the then prevailing policy towards HIV treatment in South Africa – something encouraged by domestic activists, and a “solidarity” warmly embraced.
More than this, South Africa’s own history is presented as a template for righting the world’s wrongs. The anti-apartheid movement is fondly remembered by the ANC, and by many others. While scholars can debate its impact, it’s a fairly safe claim that mass public condemnation abroad – particularly in the Western democracies – made South Africa’s domestic policies an acute embarrassment to foreign governments, and consequently relations with South Africa a liability.
Lex Libertas’ campaign stands conceptually firmly in this tradition – those who might denounce it can only credibly do so because they disapprove of the cause, not the means. We like the things we like, after all. From the organisation’s own perspective, it’s an entirely rational thing to do. South Africa’s government is vulnerable to foreign opinion, and at the moment, an opportunity presents itself in a US administration that may be receptive to that message.
Can this be described as treason, or even disloyalty? Not remotely, in my view. One can debate the magnitude of the problem it is highlighting, and the correctness of its perspectives of the issue. One may even dispute the advisability of its campaign. It may backfire. But it also seems to me that the issue is a real one, and one that in key respects the South African state has been remiss in addressing. No less, by the way, is the case for King Dalinyebo and the water crisis.
Consider this: when confronted by President Trump with footage of Julius Malema chanting about killing Boers, President Ramaphosa could only claim that this was not the policy of the government. Fair enough, but he could also point to no instance where such rhetoric had been condemned. I can’t think of any myself. This is also after three decades of finger wagging about how free speech is always be qualified with references to the sanctity of human dignity and the imperatives of nation building. Afriforum has repeatedly appealed to the president and his party to speak out on this matter in the terms that they have brought to bear on any number of others. But on this one issue, and on this one alone, our ruling elite finds its inner libertarian. My sense is that the ANC’s nationalist instincts simply cannot accommodate the sensitivities of minorities when they are perceived to intrude into what it views as its treasured ideological heritage. In that sense, it’s reasonable to conclude that there is no hope for change without pressure from the outside – where the mystique of the ANC as a civil rights movement (albeit a morally faded one), and South Africa as a bastion of hope for humanity may retain some cachet.
None of this should be taken to mean that I’m necessarily endorsing this plan. I’m analysing it, and it seems to me quite in keeping with the state of the world and the approach to activism.
For those who object to this brand of extra-territorial politics, well, I can’t offer a great deal. Except perhaps to say that it’s still easier to look within one’s borders than without. Containing political contestation depends on the incentives: can the goals be achieved through dialogue between factions, are those with power willing to compromise, and do they have the capacity to deliver on what is asked of them? Answer these questions and a display of crosses on the National Mall in Washington and Israeli water projects in the Eastern Cape become eminently comprehensible. If these circumstances were different, if South Africa actually had a governing culture of inclusion and competence, these matters might well have remained within the country’s borders.
They are not. And as a free society, we need to get used to that.
[Image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/field-of-white-crosses-10550031/]
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend