“You ducked,” I say. I am, as they say today, calling Noah out.
“I didn’t duck. I am here, aren’t I! What do you want me to do, prance around like Francis Drake?”
“No, but I do think you might have taken a gander. Instead, you ducked it.” I recognise that this is becoming absurd. I feel like a goose — a far from paltry feeling — but I simply can’t help it.
Perhaps, in a previous life, I swam upon a mere. Perhaps, back then, I was no mere duck, but a graceful swan. It’s not impossible: I have a lot of neck, and a fair degree of leadership. [That’s quite enough of that – Ed.]
Noah is in no mood for banter. He demands an answer. “What did I duck?” he says insistently.
“I asked you to speak about Orania, and you ducked the issue. You gave me a lot of cock and bull about Father William.”
“‘Father’ — it’s ‘Father’! Father William, aka William of Orania,” crows Noah. He wins: he who chirps last chirps loudest.
“Whatever! But duck you did. I asked you whether Orania is lawful under the Constitution, and you ducked the question.”
“I was exhausted by your deft cross-examination. I felt down. In life, as you well know, I am down or up, eider one or t’other. At that juncture, I felt down. Ha! Ha!” I have long since seen why Noah laughs at his own jokes. Someone must fill a silence that would otherwise be sepulchral.
“So here we go. I know you have only the vaguest idea of Orania, so I shall give you the lowdown. Orania is a redeveloped construction camp on a private farm on the banks of the Orange River. It was originally bought by Willem Boshoff and his friends as a haven for Afrikaners. Today, a substantial community lives there in a state, if not of bliss, then surely of contentment.
“A narrow one”
“To live in Orania, you must be an Afrikaner, speak Afrikaans, and espouse traditional Afrikaans values. You must also have no criminal record. The committee that vets applicants exercises a broad discretion — or, better put, a narrow one, since a black person has yet to be admitted.
“The community is resolutely self-sufficient. It serves itself and relies on no outside help. There is a museum with busts of all pre-transition presidents save one. FW de Klerk is the invisible man, seen as a traitor to the Volk.
“If you haven’t got the picture by now, let your birdbrain contemplate a match between the Jewish kibbutz and the clannish Amish.”
“Birdbrain!” I cry. “But I digress. I want to know whether Orania is lawful under the Constitution.”
Noah draws himself up. This, I know, is a prelude to a declamation of the BIG IDEA. “People think that the insistence on Equality and its enforcement through anti-discrimination provisions is grounded in ethics, morality, or basic decency.
“This plays well with the middle classes. But, properly understood, the whole panoply of egalitarian measures is largely a form of social control.
“Old Marx would have called it ‘false consciousness’. To suggest these rules are grounded purely in our values is to spout a shibboleth.”
“Rubbish,” I cry. “Equality jurisprudence has an important role to play in every developed society.”
“Let’s see who is right. Do you think a choice of mate should be subject to legal scrutiny? Should the State punish someone for choosing a spouse or lover on the basis of race?”
“Of course not!”
State scrutiny
“Should your choice of flat mate, even if based on race, be subject to State scrutiny? Should the State decide whom you can have for dinner, host in your spare room, or play sport with?”
“Of course not!” If records still existed, I would be sounding like a stuck record.
“Why not? Why not?” I make no reply. I have lived long enough to know a rhetorical question when I see one.
“The easy answer is to say these matters are private and intimate. But the real reason is simpler: in such cases, the State sees no harm in letting people be.
“As the circle of racial regulation widens, however, the State’s concern grows. An entity like Orania, harmless in itself, makes government wonder whether an example is being set that could encourage division.
“Nelson Mandela visited Orania and gave it his blessing. Jacob Zuma’s blessing counted for less. Lesufi, by contrast, declared it should be razed to the ground. Each man was making his own calculation about the risk to social cohesion. This is the same thinking that drives much of affirmative action and race-norming. It is social programming, whatever the theorists claim.”
“Didn’t the Nazis approach the matter in much the same way?” I object.
“Here we go: Godwin’s Law strikes again!”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Once again, I prefer to duck the question. Look it up on a search engine. I suggest DuckDuckGo.”
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