“When did liberals stop caring about minorities?” asks Martin van Staden. The answer is: they didn’t stop; they never did.
I should qualify that statement from the start: liberals don’t care about minorities as minority groups. They care about minorities only by implication, because they care about individuals.
The distinction is important. Let me quote the ideologically neutral PolSci Institute: “Classical liberals believe that individuals are autonomous agents capable of governing their own lives. Autonomy means the freedom to make personal choices about how to live, what to believe, and which goals to pursue, without unnecessary interference from external authorities.”
But what about minorities, then? Surely, classical liberals have always advocated for the rights of oppressed minority groups? More than that, in fact; liberals have always advocated for any oppressed groups, whether minority or majority groups (like black South Africans). But they have not done so because of their group identity.
Classical liberalism, as PolSci puts it, “safeguards dissenting voices and minority groups”, so, when classical liberals base their political policy positions exclusively upon individual rights and freedoms, they implicitly support people who face discrimination because of a group identity, or for any other reason. Their defence of the rights of people who identify as part of groups derives purely from their defence of the rights of each individual within that group.
Bad faith
This has to be said again, in light of a lengthy piece Martin van Staden, Free Market Foundation (FMF) executive director and one of its delegates to support Solidarity and AfriForum on their “3000 Crosses” mission to the United States, wrote in response to the arguments I have made in recent articles about the dangers of associating universalist ideologies like classical liberalism with the narrow interests of ethnic advocacy groups.
Much what Van Staden writes has been answered in my articles on the subject. In particular, Van Staden continues to conflate the right of Afrikaners to identify as such and for AfriSol to conduct political activism on behalf of its members, with the wisdom of a free-market advocacy organisation participating in that activism.
From the start, I have said I applaud much of what Solidarity and AfriForum do, recognise their right to exist, and accept their right to advocate on behalf of their members. Still, Van Staden tries to smear me as guilty of having “maligned” Afrikaners out of some sort of prejudice. That suggests bad faith, instead of an honest disagreement about the strategic positioning of free markets and classical liberalism in South Africa’s public discourse.
Not about him
Van Staden’s article runs to 5,340-odd words and links to another 75,000 words of his own, so I can’t address everything in it.
I disagree with key parts of Van Staden’s oeuvre, but that is best left for “a meeting over tea”, to quote him. I do want to raise a few points pursuant to his latest article, however.
First, my previous articles were not about Van Staden. The first was about the FMF’s role in AfriSol’s 3000 Crosses project. The second responded to something he said. The third was a response to Ernst van Zyl’s letter to the editor. He was quoted, not targeted.
Second, I have no idea where he gets the idea that I accused anyone “of all sorts of nastiness”. I did no such thing. But I will say that I consider it disrespectful of him to refer to Leon Louw, who founded and for half a century led the FMF, as a “disgruntled former employee”.
What Louw said about the FMF’s non-partisan advocacy role, and his resistance to what Van Staden has since described as “muscular”, “tangible” or “proactive” political activism, is highly relevant to the issues I raised. I can understand, though, if Van Staden prefers that this particular nastiness be forgotten.
“Monoculture”
Third, he seems to think that the only way in which a country can be “united in its diversity” is by striving for some kind of totalitarian monoculture. That is, of course, absurd. Just as absurd as the critique – which he adopted wholesale from conservative communitarianism – that individualism implies an atomistic rejection of social bonds or cultural identity.
What individualism means is that citizens have rights and liberties by virtue of their status as individuals, and not by virtue of their status as members of a group. It says absolutely nothing about how they exercise those rights, who they associate with, or how they express their culture.
The reason why race-based laws ought to be abolished is not because they victimise minorities, but because they infringe upon individual rights. That is the core of the disagreement.
Identity politics
Fourth, his laundry list of identity-based societies and nation states does not justify the claim that liberalism and identity politics are perfectly compatible.
Van Staden sees a border across Ireland separating Catholics from Protestants, and republicans from unionists, as perfectly natural. The true liberal would ask whether convincing both sides to get along wouldn’t be a better political ambition, producing greater individual liberty and economic prosperity.
He mentions Scottish separatism, but Scotland’s most beloved poet prayed that “Man to Man the warld o’er / Shall brithers be for a’ that.”
To go on to claim that I practise “identity politics” by advocating a political ideology is to stretch the definition of identity to beyond recognition. Identity politics seeks accommodation on the basis of inborn characteristics, as opposed to chosen interests, opinions, actions or advocacy.
Democracy
Fifth, his musings about a “qualified franchise” reflect his youth. I agree that there are excellent arguments to be made against a universal franchise, and against democracy in general. But unlike him, I lived through the violence, stress, distrust and brinkmanship that produced a peaceful, negotiated settlement for a New South Africa.
Van Staden appears to have no sense of how sensitive questions about the right to vote, ethnic separatism, or rejecting the constitutional order are in South Africa.
Either that, or he doesn’t care that suggesting other South Africans be disenfranchised, or that South Africa should be split up into multiple cultural homelands, is a fast track towards either political irrelevance, or – if pursued with enough vigour – renewed political strife and even civil war.
He might take pride in Afrikaner assertiveness about self-determination, and feel that because he doesn’t think it should be seen as a threat, that the rest of South Africa will simply shrug and agree.
And if I sound like I’m being mean about Van Staden’s age, I’ll add that at his age I thought myself too young and inexperienced to write political opinion. It took Branko Brkic another few years to convince me to do so.
“Innocuous”
Sixth, there is nothing “innocuous” about the 3000 Crosses project in Washington DC.
It highlights only farm murders, as the key matter of concern for ethnic Afrikaners. This gives the impression that the far higher murder rates of other population groups are less important. It is silent on the steep decline in the farm murder rate in recent years.
It serves to reinforce the US view that Afrikaners in particular are victims of unprovoked violence and discrimination, because of their ethnic identity, and that the government is either complicit or tacitly acquiesces to this persecution.
It is specifically intended to motivate further hostility and punitive action from a US administration that has shown itself to be bellicose and spiteful even to its allies.
Constitutional settlement
Seventh, Van Staden claims that “[advocating] for reconsidering the constitutional dispensation in South Africa… [is not in itself] illiberal”.
Actually, the constitution is the only guarantor of liberty in South Africa.
What was remarkable about the negotiated settlement is that a vigorous contest pitting illiberal Afrikaner nationalists against illiberal African nationalists produced an exquisitely liberal constitution with all the individual rights upon which classical liberalism insists.
It guarantees the right to own property, to privacy, to assemble and petition, to choose one’s trade, and to due process, along with freedom of speech, belief, association, religion, language and culture.
It also establishes all the other institutions that guarantee our freedom.
Everything Van Staden says he is fighting for – including an end to racial laws and action on farm murders – can be claimed as constitutional rights.
The “disgruntled ex-employee of the FMF” that Van Staden so casually dismisses was there. He remembers how hard-fought these liberties were, and how close South Africa came to civil war instead. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t even have a private property clause in the constitution.
I suppose you could renegotiate the remaining flaws out of the constitution and seek an even more liberal alternative. Or – and I’m just an old fogey spitballin’ here – you could quit while you’re ahead and not flirt so casually with volatile forces that you couldn’t hope to control once you’ve burned the only document that protects you.
Dying on the vine
Eighth, Van Staden continues to suggest that AfriSol merely insists upon their perfectly liberal right not to be discriminated against, to which no classical liberal can object.
I have made it repeatedly clear that I don’t object to this, at all. Although I do take issue with the strong nationalist-conservative streak that runs through AfriSol, that’s their problem, not mine.
But that streak also makes them poor exemplars of and proponents for classical liberal principles and individual rights.
I am certain that the cause of classical liberalism and free markets will die on the vine if it becomes identified with the very ethnic group that has in fairly recent history been associated with grand apartheid.
That doesn’t mean liberals cannot speak on the same topics, or agree on particular matters. We can (and do, as Van Staden well knows) agree that AfriForum is correct when it says racial preferences in law should end.
But it does mean that advocates of liberal ideas should avoid participating in the campaigns of conservative, nationalist, ethnicity-based groups who themselves deny that they are liberal.
Van Staden says “an American libertarian organisation might tarnish libertarianism by associating with white supremacist groups”, because “[t]hose groups all mean to do harm – as defined according to classical liberalism – but none of that is apparent or even latent here.”
The problem is that to most South Africans, it is latent here. They do not trust the bona fides of AfriSol. Its leaders were once members of organisations that were deeply committed to apartheid, and rejected the negotiated settlement from the outset.
I don’t take an ex-con at their word that they found Jesus in jail and are now as honest as the day is long. I don’t take former KGB agents at their word that they’re now reborn disciples of Hayek. I think South Africans can be forgiven for not taking former apartheid supporters at their word when they profess a newfound faith in equal rights for all.
Maybe they really have had Damascene conversions, but that many policy-makers and voters would not believe them is an existential threat to the causes which I hold dear.
Van Staden might value standing on principle over pandering to perceptions. But if you want to achieve political change, perceptions matter.
Self-righteously stamping your feet and declaring that if nobody wants to play with you, you’ll just play on your own is not how you establish a classical liberal future for South Africa. It just gets everyone else’s backs up, which I do not believe is a mature approach to advocating political change.
“Racial grievance discourse”
Ninth, Van Staden denounces “racial grievance discourse”, which is rich for a white Afrikaner in a country with South Africa’s history.
Of course there are racial grievances. Sure, it is worth challenging some of the conclusions of people who raise them, but denying the validity of racial grievances is blind to reality.
He idealistically argues as if what should happen – that the apartheid past has been replaced with a non-racial society – has already happened, which suggests political naïveté. He might not want race to matter in South Africa, or does not think it should matter, but it does.
Portraying Afrikaners as hapless victims of black prejudice, as if today’s racial discrimination emerged in a vacuum, misreads the room. For someone who denounces the victimhood mentality of woke left-wingers, he seems quick to claim unqualified victimhood status for Afrikaners.
It doesn’t wash, when the reason for today’s race laws is redress for past wrongs.
It is possible to argue that such discrimination ought to be dispensed with, but not without acknowledging that its motives are valid and its objectives ought to be achieved in other ways.
He sneers at “[going] along to get along, and seem like we are ‘not racists’”, saying, “We must never defend this sentiment, and insist that us not being racists is a given, regardless of pressure.”
But it isn’t. It is never a given to people who lived under apartheid, because a significant proportion of white South Africans were, or were raised to be, or still are, racist.
Van Staden wants the rest of the country to accept his word for the fact that Afrikaners are all fully recovered from racism, while participating in an Afrikaner-nationalist mission to convince a hostile foreign government that is widely perceived to pander to racist sentiments to take punitive action against our democratically-elected, majority-black government.
If Van Staden does not understand how much of a threat this is for the public image and mission of the organisation he represents, or if he doesn’t care, then perhaps he would do better to resign and join AfriForum instead.
[Image: ConCourtDoors.webp]
[Caption: The doors of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, upon which are engraved the individual rights it guarantees all South Africans. (Source: Constitutional Court Trust.)]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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