Escaping an Abusive Relationship
The DA loves the idea of a non-racial, united South Africa...but does the ANC?
Editorial assistance: Richard Thompson
If you’ve been in an abusive relationship, then you’ll know what gaslighting feels like. Whatever you do or say is depicted in the worst possible light, until eventually you fear you are going mad. The DA has just been gaslighted by the ANC around cabinet positions for the government of national unity (GNU), and now they’re having to make a tactical retreat.
As an amateur political analyst, I found myself swept up in the GNU hype, naively believing that a modern, liberal political party could work with a tribal looting network to save South Africa. (Do I ever learn?) The ANC have had 30 years to implement pro-growth policies and stop themselves from stealing. (They don’t need a GNU to do that; but they do need a GNU to stay in power.) Instead they’ve spent the 30 years enacting 140 pieces of anti-white legislation, blaming apartheid for their failures, and promoting a two-tier system of morality based on race, while gaslighting whites as being the racists.
Alas, black opinion (if social media and online newspapers are anything go by) has swung round in racial solidarity behind the ANC, blaming the DA for its usual sins: arrogance and a high-handed sense of superiority. DA leaders are only guilty of one sin, being white. The great sticking point between the two parties, and between black and white generally in this country, is “transformation”. Whites don’t want it, blacks do. Whites don’t want it because there is nothing to “transform” to; there is no shining Wakanda (i.e. African civilisation) to be made manifest. If there was, then the Wakandans would have used their superior technology to drive whites from the country long ago. Insofar as the Africanists are concerned (which by voting patterns is most black people) whites are fine so long as they remain politically neutered, like the imperial servant eunuchs of China. Our black ruling class prefer their white expertise to be de-knackered.
In an abusive relationship the abuser has you by the balls; no matter how much you love, you cannot do the loving for both parties. No matter how much the DA loves the idea of a non-racial, united South Africa, the cadres would rather have yet more race legislation — and Camps Bay mansions — to liberal democracy.
Poor Helen Zille knows all about trying to work with black leaders in the interests of the non-racial dream, only to find herself being abused. It happened with Mamphela Ramphele, who treated Zille like a work subordinate (which she had been when Ramphele was vice chancellor at UCT); and it happened with Lindiwe Mazibuko, who went from rising star to spoilt brat the moment Zille boosted her to caucus leader.
In our ruling class we have a dysfunctional and abusive elite who could not govern a spaza shop, never mind sub-Saharan Africa’s most important economy. With or without the DA, it will be looting as usual, with some weird race ideology thrown in. I would be slightly less pessimistic about this scenario if it were not for the general ideological atmosphere abroad: white equals oppressor; black equals oppressed. Four legs good, two legs bad.
Partly as a result of this ideological atmosphere, the end of history has not arrived in South Africa, which will be lamented by the man who coined the term, Francis Fukuyama.
Fukuyama predicted that liberal democracy would prevail over communism; that citizens the world over would tire of authoritarian leadership and demand their say in governance. This would follow from the collapse of communism as a necessarily authoritarian movement for improving the socioeconomic landscape. It turns out you don’t need communism to improve the conditions of the poor; all you need is free markets and relatively non-corrupt state institutions.
It is true, communism has fallen out of favour. But as I’ve argued in previous Substack pieces, economic socialism has been replaced with cultural socialism, which is about overthrowing “hegemonic white culture”. We know cultural socialism in its various guises: DEI, transformation, BEE, cadre deployment, affirmative action, critical race theory, #Rhodesmustfall … and so on. These ideas sustain the gaslighting and abuse.
When I moved from centre-left to centre-right, it was because I got tired of being bullied, conceptually and otherwise. At some point you realise that the best way to deal with a bully is to thrust your chest in their face and stand up for yourself. The more ground you give to them, the more they will take.
That’s why John Steenhuisen is an effective opposition leader. He refuses to be bullied by the cultural socialists, who would have us believe that whites carry the original sin of colonialism and race oppression; as the Jews were supposed to carry the original sin of killing Jesus. In 1994 we agreed that race nationalism is wrong, that the country belonged to all, and that weaponising race is off limits. It turns out that the agreement was one-sided. (Regrettably, many white business leaders dance along to the tune of the new race nationalists, as if history has taught them nothing.)
Whites can leave the country to escape the indignities of being a depoliticised minority. But maybe — if you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves who call you a racist1 — it is more meaningful to stay and fight.
Apologies to Rudyard Kipling