Whites and Democracy in South Africa 1847012892, 9781847012890

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Contents
Illustrations
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part One
The Politics of White Rule
Putting the Liberal into Democracy
Securing the Transition? Whites and the TRC
Looking Back: Whites and the TRC Today
Part Two
White Hopes, Fears and Fate after 1994
Disillusion and Dystopia
Staying Put and Getting on with Life
Political Liberalism after Apartheid: The Democratic Alliance
Afrikaner Politics after Apartheid
Whites as Citizens
Part Three
Is There Still White in the Rainbow?
Appendix
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

Related James Currey titles on South & Southern Africa South Africa. The Present as History: From Mrs Ples to Mandela & Marikana John S. Saul & Patrick Bond Liberation Movements in Power: Party & State in Southern Africa Roger Southall The New Black Middle Class in South Africa Roger Southall Mandela’s Kinsmen: Nationalist Elites & Apartheid’s First Bantustan Timothy Gibbs Women, Migration & the Cashew Economy in Southern Mozambique Jeanne Marie Penvenne Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water & Belonging in Southern Zimbabwe Joost Fontein Writing Revolt: An Engagement with African Nationalism, 1957–67 Terence Ranger Colonialism & Violence in Zimbabwe: A History of Suffering Heike I. Schmidt The Road to Soweto: Resistance & the Uprising of 16 June 1976 Julian Brown Markets on the Margins: Mineworkers, Job Creation & Enterprise Development Kate Philip The War Within: New Perspectives on the Civil War in Mozambique, 1976–1992 Eric Morier-Genoud, Michel Cahen & Domingos M. do Rosário (eds) Township Violence & the End of Apartheid: War on the Reef Gary Kynoch Limpopo’s Legacy: Student Politics & Democracy in South Africa Anne K. Heffernan Cyril Ramaphosa: The Road to Presidential Power Anthony Butler Archaeology and Oral Tradition in Malawi: Origins and Early History of the Chewa Yusuf M. Juwayeyi Manhood, Morality & the Transformation of Angolan Society: MPLA Veterans & Post-war Dynamics John Spall Young Women against Apartheid: Gender, Youth and South Africa’s Liberation Struggle Emily Bridger The Vaal Uprising of 1984 & the Struggle for Freedom in South Africa Franziska Rueedi Namib: The Archaeology of an African Desert John Kinahan Marikana: A People’s History Julian Brown Whites & Democracy in South Africa Roger Southall Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa: The National Peace Accord, 1991–1994* E.D.H. Carmichael *forthcoming

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

Roger Southall

JAMES CURREY

James Currey is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) www.jamescurrey.com and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue Rochester, NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com © Roger Southall, 2022 Published in paperback in South Africa in 2022 by African Sun Media Office 5 The Woodmill Vredenburg Road Stellenbosch, SOUTH AFRICA First published in Rest of World by James Currey in 2022 The right of Roger Southall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-84701-289-0 ( James Currey cloth) ISBN 978-1-928314-93-6 ( African Sun Media pbk) ISBN 978-1-80010-378-8 ( James Currey ePDF) ISBN 978-1-80010-379-5 ( James Currey ePUB)

Contents List of Illustrations

ix

Preface xi List of Abbreviations

xiii

Introduction 1 Non-racialism, Africanism and multi-culturalism

3

Whites and whiteness

8

Whites’ politics in post-apartheid South Africa

14

PART ONE: FROM SETTLERS TO DEMOCRACY 1 The Politics of White Rule

21

Settler colonialism and its demise

22

Race and citizenship after Union

24

Dual white nationalisms after Union

26

From segregation to apartheid

29

‘Herrenvolk Democracy’

33

Reaction and reform

36

The endgame

40

2 Putting the Liberal into Democracy

43

The whiteness of liberalism before 1994

43

Liberalism under apartheid

45

The progressive tradition

49

Ironic victory: the triumph of liberal ideas

51

Contents

vi

3 Securing the Transition? Whites and the TRC

61

The TRC

61

Amnesty and the demobilization of the right wing

64

Whites and reconciliation

70

4 Looking Back: Whites and the TRC Today

75

White assessments of the commission

77

Was apartheid a crime against humanity?

80

Apartheid compared to other systems of oppression

83

White culpability and complicity

86

Assessing how whites look back

92

PART T WO: WHITES AS DEMOCRATS 5 White Hopes, Fears and Fate after 1994

101

The rights to property, schooling and language

102

The ANC’s management of the economy

103

Racial redress

108

Fear of crime

111

The maintenance of white prosperity

114

6 Disillusion and Dystopia

119

Democracy, the impossible choice

121

On the way down: South Africa under the ANC

125

‘Reverse racism’ and the end of reconciliation

127

The reappearance of poor whites

132

Fear, crime and violence

133

7 Staying Put and Getting on with Life

138

Flight or fortitude? Going or staying?

140

Yes, we can! White privileges and advantages

143

Attitudes towards political participation

145

Whites: reluctant democrats?

150

Contents 8 Political Liberalism after Apartheid: The Democratic Alliance

vii 156

The challenge of race

156

The Democratic Alliance: formation and performance, 2000–19

157

The DA’s political trajectory

160

Retreat from transformation?

173

Liberalism’s struggle with race

176

9 Afrikaner Politics after Apartheid

180

The Afrikaner elite and middle class after 1994

180

The return of ‘poor whites’?

184

Retreat or engagement? Afrikaner responses to democracy

187

Where is the volk now?

202

10 Whites as Citizens

205

Whites and the politics of representation

206

Whites and the politics of recognition

212

Whites and the politics of redistribution

216

White citizenship: a politics of defence?

227

PART THREE: CONCLUSION: BEYOND RACE? 11 Is There Still White in the Rainbow?

231

The relative success of a failed settler state

231

Whites and reconciliation

234

Whites and whiteness

235

The road to non-racialism

238

Whites and the quest for non-racialism

248

Appendix: Focus Groups: Methodology and Analysis

251

Bibliography 255 Index 267

Illustrations

Figures 4.1 ‘In the past, the state committed atrocities against those struggling against apartheid’ (Certainly true/probably true)

96

4.2 ‘Apartheid was a crime against humanity’ (Certainly true/ probably true)

96

10.1 Registration levels across population groups, 2004–19

208

10.2 Turnout of registered voters by population group, 2004–19

209

10.3 Party identification by population group, 1999–2018

211

Tables 5.1 White expectations of black rule in South Africa, 1987

101

5.2 Annual average household income by race, 1996–2016 (Rand)

115

5.3 Annual income per capita by race, 1996–2016 (Rand)

116

6.1 Perceived differences in racism between 2001 and 2016, by percentage

120

8.1 National elections: party percentages of votes

158

8.2 Percentage of voting-age population by population group voting for DA, 2000–19

170

Preface This has been an uncomfortable book for a white author who lives in South Africa to write. Although I am not South African by birth, I have lived and worked in South African academia since just before the arrival of democracy. Given the extensive de facto racial inequalities which have persisted since 1994, I have undoubtedly enjoyed countless advantages in life which are still not available to the majority of South Africans. Inevitably, this has been the cause of considerable personal reflection, now that I consider South Africa my home. Ultimately, this has led to this book, because whereas much of the literature on the white minority left behind by apartheid is overwhelmingly negative and condemnatory, I have preferred to look for nuance. As a result, my answer to the question the book poses – ‘how has the white minority accommodated to democracy in South Africa?’ – is bound to be contested. A highly negative answer, arguing that whites have either unwillingly or unwittingly failed to adapt, would likely be criticized for ignoring significant changes which have occurred in the status and behaviour of whites since the arrival of democracy in 1994. A strongly favourable answer, proclaiming whites’ virtuous embrace of change, would be roundly attacked for seeking to absolve white behaviour and attitudes which indicate continuity with the apartheid past. I have sought to steer clear of both dangers, and the answer I give is a complicated one, offered against the long run of South African history. Whether I have succeeded or not must be left to readers and reviewers. Whatever the case, I remain convinced that a detailed consideration of how whites have adjusted to democracy is still a subject of not only historical, but also contemporary importance, and I can only hope that this book represents a constructive attempt to address the matter. However, given the controversies (or contempt) the book is likely to provoke, it matters more than usual that the author absolve all those who assisted in its writing for the content and conclusions drawn. The book was conceived prior to the arrival and impact of Covid-19 on global and South African shores. In this I was very fortunate, as it enabled the holding of white focus groups around South Africa in late 2019, analysis of whose discussions constitute an important part of this study. I would like to record my thanks to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for their generous funding of this study, without which the entire project would have fallen by the wayside. My particular thanks go to Dr Henning Suhr, the Director of the Foundation’s South African office, who approved the project, and Ms Nancy Msibi, the Foundation’s

xii

Preface

long-time administrator, who facilitated its implementation. As indicated in my Appendix, the focus groups were selected and managed and their discussions transcribed by Citizen Surveys of Cape Town, and for this I have to express my warm thanks to Washeelah Kapery (Managing Director) and Ebrahim January (who is responsible for their national field operations). I am very grateful to Barbara van Heerden and Dries Ludke, who expertly moderated the focus groups on behalf of myself and Citizen Surveys. High praise and many thanks are also due to Kate Lefko-Everett, who brought a great depth of experience in survey work to the daunting task of coding the transcripts, thereby rendering them accessible to an end-user whose technological capacities lie rather closer to the nineteenth than the twenty-first century. The focus group transcripts are freely available for use by other researchers at https://kas.de.web.suedafrika. Finally, my thanks also go to my colleague Collette Schulz-Herzenberg of the Political Science Department of Stellenbosch University, who generously provided me with line graphs to help elucidate the statistical data arising from attitude surveys undertaken by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. I am once again indebted to Jaqueline Mitchell, the Commissioning Editor at James Currey, for managing the acceptance of this manuscript for publication with exemplary efficiency, patience and kindness, and for procuring reviews from anonymous readers which were extraordinarily useful in bringing about its improvement; to Tracey Engel, for her care as a technical editor; and to Emily Champion, for technical assistance for some tasks which were beyond a twenty-­ first-century luddite. My thanks are also due to Wikus van Zyl and Michelle Meyer of Stellenbosch University Press for the ease and efficiency with which they moved the process of co-publication along. As ever, I have received the loving support of my wife, Hilary, who continues to tolerate me after more years than it is wise to mention.

Abbreviations ANC

African National Congress

ANCYL

African National Congress Youth League

APO

African People’s Organisation

AVF

Afrikaner Volksfront

AWB

Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging

BDF

Bophuthatswana Defence Force

BIG

Basic Income Grant

BEE

Black Economic Empowerment

Codesa

Convention for a Democratic South Africa

Cosag

Concerned South Africans Group

Cosatu

Congress of South African Trade Unions

CP

Conservative Party

CPSA1

Communist Party of South Africa

CST

Colonialism of a Special Type

DA

Democratic Alliance

DP

Democratic Party

DRC

Dutch Reformed Church

EFF

Economic Freedom Fighters

FF

Freedom Front

Gear

Growth, Employment and Redistribution programme

GNU

Government of National Unity

HNP

Herstigte Nasionale Party

HSRC

Human Sciences Research Council

ID

Independent Democrats

IDASA

Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa

1

Banned by the National Party government in 1950.

IEC

Independent Electoral Commission

IFP

Inkatha Freedom Party

IRB

(Canadian) Immigration and Refugee Board

IRR

Institute of Race Relations

JSE

Johannesburg Stock Exchange

LP

Liberal Party

MP

Member of Parliament

MPNF

Multi-Party Negotiating Forum

MWU

Mineworkers’ Union

NDR

National Democratic Revolution

NNP

New National Party

NP

National Party

PAC

Pan-Africanist Congress

PFP

Progressive Federal Party

PP

Progressive Party

PRP

Progressive Reform Party

RDP

Reconstruction and Development Programme

RET

Radical Economic Transformation

SACOD

South African Congress of Democrats

SACP

South African Communist Party

SADF

South African Defence Force

SAIC

South African Indian Congress

SAP

South African Party

SMMEs

Small, Medium and Micro-Enterprises

SOEs

State-Owned Enterprises

TRC

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

UDF

United Democratic Front

UN

United Nations

VAP

Voting-Age Population

WMC

White Monopoly Capital

2

2

An underground movement formed after the 1950 ban of the CPSA.

Introduction In December 1948, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Consisting of thirty articles which affirmed individual rights, it was subsequently to be elaborated in a multiplicity of international treaties, national constitutions, regional human rights instruments and many other laws. Just previously, the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 had inaugurated the wave of decolonization which was to sweep across Asia and Africa over the forthcoming decades. Yet, at the very moment when the colonial project was beginning to unravel, the National Party (NP) won an election which was to send South Africa marching in the opposite direction. In an era when brown and black peoples across the globe were beating back imperialism and claiming their rights to self-government and human equality, South Africa was being launched on a trajectory of reinvigorated white power and the more rigid separation of the ‘races’. Apartheid ensured that South Africa’s whites earned themselves a very unenviable reputation. The state that the NP was to construct was to become synonymous with racism, exploitation, brutality and dictatorship. The world was never short of vile regimes, but in the era of decolonization, the sins of numerous other oppressive governments were regularly brushed aside, while in contrast, South Africa was regularly condemned, at the UN and in other international fora, as one of the vilest, if not the vilest, of the lot. Correspondingly, the country’s white rulers, and the white electorate which continued to re-elect the NP throughout the four-decade-long apartheid period, came to be regarded as global outcasts – as anti-modern and irrational throwbacks to an unlamented imperialist age, insufferably racist and politically inflexible. In many parts of the world, apartheid ensured that South African whites became hated, whether or not they supported the regime as individuals. They became increasingly beleaguered and isolated. Whites bearing South African passports were banned from entering numerous countries; South African sports teams were barred from participating in overseas tours and international sporting events because they were racially segregated; South African academics confronted a widespread academic boycott which severely limited their international contacts; when they were abroad, whites were often reluctant or embarrassed to admit to being South African; the country’s white business community had to resort to subterfuge and underhand strategies to evade sanctions imposed by international bodies; overseas companies investing in and trading

2

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

with South Africa were subjected to political campaigns to break ties and disinvest. Of course, Western governments were to maintain strong ties with South Africa for economic and strategic reasons throughout the Cold War era, and conservative opinion in the United States, the United Kingdom and much of Europe continued to sympathize with the white minority regime through to the very end of apartheid. Even so, as the years rolled by, South Africa became an embarrassment even to its friends. Belatedly, Western pressure was to play a significant role in bringing about the dismantling of apartheid. Much has changed since 1994. During the late 1980s, the obduracy of President P.W. Botha and his aggressive resistance to domestic and international pressure for South Africa to democratize was to become a cause of immense frustration to those Western powers who deemed themselves the country’s best friends. Correspondingly, they were to give enthusiastic backing to F.W. de Klerk who, after he had replaced Botha as president in 1989, moved swiftly to embrace a reformist agenda. Within a short space of time, he released Nelson Mandela, the iconic leader of the African National Congress (ANC) from prison, unbanned all those opposition movements which the regime had proclaimed illegal and inaugurated the negotiations which eventually culminated in the country’s first all-race, democratic elections in April 1994. De Klerk’s contribution (highly controversial though it was at home) was to be internationally lionized, and he was to become a joint recipient with Nelson Mandela of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. The reputation of whites leapt correspondingly. Whereas they had been globally reviled, they were now hailed for their pulling back from the brink of civil war, for embracing pragmatism and realism and for a new generosity. The world looked on with a mix of praise, wonder and excitement as whites, blacks and browns queued together patiently, and above all, joyfully, to vote in those first democratic elections. 1994 is now a long time ago. Since then, much has changed in South Africa and, undoubtedly, largely for the better. Above all, South Africa is a country in which the racial restrictions of apartheid have been removed and which aspires to racial equality and equality of opportunity. Instead of the white electorate being the sole umpire of the country’s fate, whites have had to accommodate to democracy. Yet many would say that demographics and history dictated that they had little alternative. Indeed, there are those who would say that even if they were compelled by circumstances to accept democracy, whites remain ‘reluctant democrats’ and look back fondly to an age when the white man ruled what he surveyed. The question this book wants to ask is: is this so? What is the place and role of whites in South African political life today? Are they genuinely willing participants in a ‘non-racial democracy’? To what extent are they willing to forgo the racial privileges of the past and to make the sacrifices which may be demanded of them? These are very real and pressing questions which loom large in a contemporary South Africa where there is much debate about how much progressive change

Introduction

3

has actually been brought about since 1994. Indeed, there is a growing volume of suggestions that South Africa’s ‘non-racial democracy’ has become something of a sham, with a host of (overwhelmingly black) critics complaining that while the constitutional settlement may have entrenched legal equality, the reality is that it has provided cover for the continuance of white privilege and power.

Non-racialism, Africanism and multi-culturalism Census data tells us that, at the last count in 2016, there were some 4.5 million whites out of a total population in South Africa of 55.7 million. In other words, whites are a minority of just 8.1 per cent, heavily outnumbered by black Africans (80.7 per cent), Coloureds (8.7 per cent) and Indians (2.5 per cent).1 Further, the relative size of the white population is declining, the growth of the other population groups seeing it fall from 10.9 per cent in 1996 (the year of the first post-apartheid census). Demographic trends suggest this decline will continue, and South Africa will become increasingly ‘black African’. Given South Africa’s official aspiration to becoming a ‘non-racial democracy’, many find it odd that the census continues to identify the country’s inhabitants by the discredited racial terminology of apartheid.2 As has been cogently argued by Gerry Mare (among others), this has many dangers. Although ‘race’ is a highly dubious concept, this practice reifies ‘race’ as a social fact and leads to what Mare terms ‘race thinking’ – that is, the ascription of different social characteristics to the different groups which are identified racially.3 This can have some alarming consequences, not least of which is its potential for stoking xenophobia. Nonetheless, despite all such difficulties and problems, the practice of differentiating the South African population by the old apartheid categories remains well established and appears destined to stay. Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), which runs the census, asserts the necessity of tracking the differential ‘population group dynamics’, such as fertility and death rates, age distributions and health profiles, which characterize the different ‘races’. Moreover, the government and other authorities identify people by race in order to assess the extent of ‘transformation’ – that is, the extent to which South African society is moving away from the racial inequalities of the past in pursuit of racial equality. Beyond that, even while recognizing that ‘race’ is a historical and social rather than a biological concept, few historians and social scientists are able to escape the continuing salience of ‘race’ in their analyses of 1 2 3

There are also relatively small numbers of ‘Others’, such as South Africans of Chinese origin. Note, however, that the census forms invite those filling them in to indicate their preferred racial identity, rather than this being ascribed to them by the state. Gerhard Mare, G. Declassified: Moving Beyond the Dead End of Race in South Africa, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2014.

4

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

South Africa. Correspondingly, this book seeks to further our understanding of how whites are thinking and behaving politically after more than twenty-five years of democracy. Inevitably, in so doing, it necessarily uses racial terminology, notwithstanding the dangers of doing so.4 A minority among other minority racial groups they may be, yet history tells us that whites are a highly significant minority, for before 1994, South Africa was subject to ‘white minority rule’. Today there are plentiful suggestions that although South Africa has become a democracy and whites have lost political power, they continue to exercise undue economic influence and enjoy continuing social privilege. However, many whites dispute this. Whereas some now argue that the term ‘whites’ no longer refers to a meaningful social category, others respond that they now belong to a beleaguered racial minority amid a sea of blacks. There can be no addressing such assertions without reference to what has become known as ‘the national question’, or who is included in, and what is meant by, the idea of the South African nation. Very often, the debate about the national question is presented as if it has been the exclusive property of the political left, but, as Neville Alexander pointed out some decades ago, the first claims to South African nationhood were made by whites.5 Because these claims were racially exclusive, denying membership of the nation to the majority population of blacks, they provided the impetus for the formation of the ANC in 1913. It was out of the long history of the ANC that non-racialism was to evolve to become the principal ideal which infuses South Africa’s democratic constitution. The term ‘non-racial democracy’ is a political goal associated with the dominant ‘Congress tradition’ of the ANC rather than a legal definition. Today, its essence is captured in the preamble of the country’s democratic constitution, which proclaims the commitments to healing ‘the divisions of the past’ and establishing ‘a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights’ – ‘a democratic and open society’ in which government ‘is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law’. In other words, the suggestion is that race should no longer matter, not in the sense that past wrongs which are an outcome of racism should not be righted, but rather that racial considerations which the law considers are not corrective of past racism, whether personal or institutional, should have no legal or political bearing in society. In a democratic state, the salience of race should disappear, and South Africa’s different peoples (or ‘nations’) should become one within a state and society whose institutions are demographically representative. 4

5

In what follows, I refer to ‘black African’, ‘black South African’, ‘African’ or ‘black’ people according to context and sentence structure. Furthermore, in keeping with conventional usage, which is inconsistent, the words ‘Coloureds’ and ‘Indians’ are capitalized, whereas the words ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’ are not. No Sizwe (Neville Alexander), One Azania, One Nation: The National Question in South Africa, London, Zed Press, 1979, pp. 11–32.

Introduction

5

In this sense, the ideal of ‘non-racialism’ has become entrenched and is publicly accepted by all but small minorities on the fringes of society. Support for any political creeds which are overtly founded upon any form of racial supremacy, subordination or even difference are no longer accepted as respectable. As a result, even those pursuing aims which, objectively, would seem to further the interests of a particular racial group have to be versed in non-racial terms if they wish to gain any legal traction. ‘Non-racialism’, to this extent, would seem to have triumphed – and that is an undoubted political good. Yet, ironically, it is far from clear what people want or expect of a ‘non-racial society’ – and that is because there is enormous contestation around what has long been debated as ‘the national question’ – that is, how the idea of a ‘South African nation’ has been conceived and might be realised. The non-racial tradition developed out of the notion that South Africa before 1994 was subject to ‘Colonialism of a Special Type’ (CST), and consisted of two nations: the colonizing (the white minority) and the colonized (the black majority). However, in June 1955, the Freedom Charter, which launched the Congress Alliance (bringing together the ANC and minority Indian, Coloured and white congress organizations),6 boldly declared that ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white’. Subsequent developments within the ANC culminated in the party, which had hitherto restricted its membership to black Africans, opening its doors to all racial groups at its Morogoro conference in Tanzania in 1969. The alliance of the different oppressed ‘nations’, along with the small number of whites prepared to identify with the struggle for democracy, was to provide the basis for ‘non-racialism’ (although it was never to be made entirely clear whether or how this would require the dissolution of the different ‘nationalities’). Non-racialism was not designed to give whites a free pass. Debate around CST theory sought to link ‘nation’ and race to class. It was to identify the privileges enjoyed by whites as derived from the power exercised by the monopolies who owned and controlled the mines, banks, finance houses, most farms and major industries. The implication was that the struggle for racial equality was also a class struggle, and that, accordingly, the attainment of formal racial equality under democracy, which would be inclusive of whites, would need to be accompanied by a social revolution to bring about substantive racial equality. This was to be conceptualized as the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), the pursuit of which was to lead to the de-racialization of South African capitalism. In the view of at least a substantial wing of the ANC and its political partners, this would be a step towards the eventual goal of socialism.7 6 7

The Congress Alliance brought together the ANC, the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People’s Congress and the (white) Congress of Democrats, along with the non-racial Congress of South African Trade Unions. Discussions of the non-racial tradition are numerous. Recent contributions include Nhanhla Ndebele and Noor Nieftagodien, ‘The Morogoro Conference: A Moment

6

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

The principal challenge to non-racialism has come from the Africanist tradition. This evolved in the late 1940s and 1950s in response to the ideological stress on racial apartness, white superiority and black subordination elaborated by the NP after its victory in the 1948 general election. Arguing that the NP’s programme of apartheid should be met by a responsive philosophy of African emancipation, the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), reacting against what it considered to be conservatism of the ANC leadership, began to assert that Africans, by right of indigenous origins and preponderant numbers, were the only nation entitled to rule South Africa. If Africans were the rightful owners of the country, then whites would have to vacate power and relinquish what they had stolen. This implied either (more generously) that whites should be persuaded to accept the principles of equality and African majority rule or (in a more unforgiving sense) that whites were essentially racist, duplicitous and unreformable. It was this latter interpretation which informed Africanists’ deep suspicions of the motives of white liberals and, more particularly, their perception of the undue influence of white communists on the ANC and Congress Alliance throughout the 1950s. These suspicions were to culminate in the break of Africanists from the ANC and their formation of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) under the leadership of Robert Sobukwe in 1959. The Africanist tradition has always remained subordinate to the more inclusive non-racialism of the ANC. In large part, this has been because, following a brief prominence after its foundation, the PAC was to lapse into a history of vicious internecine feuding from which it has never recovered. However, Africanist thought has remained an important ideological influence which finds strong expression elsewhere, notably within the ANC itself. As a recent overview has stressed, the Africanist perspective is not a monolithic discourse, but a variety of discourses joined by running themes associated with African nationalism, African Marxism, pan-Africanism and Black Consciousness.8 Despite differences in emphasis, they share the conviction that while democracy should

8

of Self-Reflection’, in South African Democracy Education Trust, The Road to Democracy in South Africa: Volume 1, 1960–1970, Cape Town, Zebra Press and South African Democracy Education Trust, 2004, pp. 573–600; Jeremy Cronin and Alex Mashilo, ‘Decentring the Question of Race: Critical Reflections on Colonialism of a Special Type’ and Luli Callanicos, ‘Oliver Tambo and the National Question’, both the latter in Edward Webster and Karen Pampallis, The Unresolved National Question: Left Thought Under Apartheid, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2017, pp. 60–76. Siphamandla Zondi, ‘The Africanist Turn in South African National Question Discourses’, in Webster and Pampallis, The Unresolved National Question, pp. 96–110. A classic survey of Africanism is provided by Gail Gerhart, Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1978.

Introduction

7

provide for individuals of whatever background to become citizens of a common state, this should require their acceptance of rule by an African majority.9 While non-racialism and Africanism continue to do battle, they have been challenged by the post-apartheid perspective of a South Africa that is composed of a ‘rainbow’ (or multi-coloured diversity) of peoples who must strive for peace and harmony for the goals of democracy to be realised. It is indissolubly associated with the stress laid by President Nelson Mandela upon the necessity of national reconciliation between all South Africa’s peoples. This message was built into the fabric of the democratic constitution. The latter’s preamble commits the people of South Africa to recognizing the injustices of the past and honouring those who suffered for freedom while respecting all those who worked to build the country. In an echo of the Freedom Charter, it states that ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity’. In essence, the preamble is a secular version of the political praxis and liberation theology of Archbishop Desmond Tutu (now Emeritus), the courageously militant, non-violent and highly principled opponent of apartheid. Using his international stature as a turbulent priest who had sought to direct the struggle for liberation in a moral manner, Tutu drew deeply upon an African philosophical approach to life and the concept of ubuntu, the belief that caring for others regardless of their race, culture, creed, gender or status is the essence of the human being.10 It was Tutu who proclaimed South Africans to be ‘the rainbow people of God’, the rainbow being composed of the multi-hued diversity of the country’s different colours, religions and languages. Rainbowism has been strongly criticized as utopian and divorced from the realities of oppression which have remained embedded in post-1994 South Africa. Such criticisms concentrate heavily upon the structural imbalances in the economy which continue to condemn a large proportion of the black population to enervating poverty. Critics also seek to counter the complacency that they feel rainbowism is likely to induce, especially among whites, for whom it may represent a supremely comfortable way of legitimizing enduring racial disparities. While accepting this, rainbowism’s advocates insist that it is quite a different matter to challenge the inclusive ideal to which the constitution aspires. 9

10

I acknowledge but pass over the Trotskyist tradition associated with the Non-­ European Unity Movement, the foremost proponent of which was Neville Alexander. Despite the important intellectual challenges which it has posed to both non-racialism and Africanism, it has always remained a minority tradition with limited political influence. For a recent discussion, see Enver Motala and Sallim Vally, ‘Neville Alexander and the National Question’, in Webster and Pampallis, The Unresolved National Question, pp. 130–48. Joseph Tshwane, ‘The Rainbow Nation: A Critical Analysis of the Notions of Community in the Thinking of Desmond Tutu’, PhD thesis in Theology, University of South Africa, 2009.

8

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

Generally, it would appear that the critics do not mean to do this, just as most do not want to abandon the Congress tradition’s aspiration to non-racialism. However, while non-racialism would seem to espouse the goal that racial divisions and identities should disappear, the metaphor of the rainbow seems to suggest that while they should co-exist amicably, South Africans are likely to retain their diversity along lines of race, community, religion or whatever. Rainbowism is the equivalent of what in other societies is widely referred to as multi-culturalism.11 Simultaneously, it harks back to the long-established liberal tradition whereby South Africa has been depicted as a ‘plural society’. This approach rested upon the assumption that while South Africa’s diverse communities were bound together through functional interdependence and mutual cooperation, their interactions had simultaneously been highly unequal and conflictual.12 Non-racialism, Africanism and multi-culturalism continue to wrestle with the problem of how inequalities between South Africa’s different communities may be overcome. The equally pressing question is to understand how a South Africa characterized by massive racial and other inequalities manages, somehow or other, to hang together. It is a question which informs the purpose of this book.

Whites and whiteness It is against this background that this book sets out to think about the role and place of whites in South Africa’s non-racial democracy. Some may query the relevance, motivation and even legitimacy of this project. After all, was not the anti-apartheid struggle essentially about the overthrow of white minority rule? Why should we now be worrying ourselves about whites, now that white minority rule has been overcome? Should we not be concerning ourselves with the fate and prospects of the formerly oppressed and exploited – that is, the majority of the population, the overwhelming proportion of whom are black? What is it about whites that demands special consideration? These are all legitimate questions. They also highlight that the topic is an extremely uncomfortable one. So why study whites? And how should this be done? Beyond the fact that it is important for anyone who is white and living in South Africa to reflect upon their place in a country so notorious for its racist past, there are other important reasons for seriously considering the role of whites. Just two will be mentioned here. 11 12

Ali Rattansi, Multiculturalism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011. Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson (eds), The Oxford History of South Africa: South Africa to 1870, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969; and Pierre van den Berghe, South Africa: A Study in Conflict, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1970.

Introduction

9

The first of these is that for years prior to what was widely termed ‘the miracle’ of South Africa’s transition to democracy, there were widespread fears that the intensity of racial conflict was such that it might result in a racial war, pitching black against white. Although many observers felt that the white minority regime’s overwhelming military advantage could enable it to hang on to power for many years, it was also widely recognized that other factors – notably demography (the faster growth of the black population relative to the white) – meant that the question posed was always going to be ‘how long will South Africa survive?’13 And if ‘South Africa’ didn’t survive, then what would happen to the whites? In his magisterial survey of white supremacy in South Africa and the United States, published in 1981, George Fredrickson opined in his closing pages that in the long run a ‘South Africa for the Africans’ was unstoppable. The whites, he argued, might well have a place in such a South Africa of the future: But the nature of this place will depend on the decisions that the white leadership makes in the years to come when faced with increasing pressures from within South Africa and without to dismantle apartheid and enfranchise the African majority. Intransigent opposition to these demands for basic change will only invite race war and could ultimately result in the oppression or even the expulsion of the white community by victorious African nationalists. Accommodation – a willingness to share political power and economic resources in an equitable way – might still enable the whites to survive as members of a permanent and useful minority within a multi-racial state … the history of white supremacy in South Africa provides little hope for such an outcome. But one of the more general lessons of history is that human groups can sometimes transcend the past and adapt to circumstances in unanticipated ways. If enlightened self-interest can induce whites to abdicate their privileged position, they may still be able to call themselves South Africans twenty-five, fifty or even a hundred years hence. Otherwise, they may end up in the same situation in which nonwhites now find themselves – as disenfranchised aliens in the land of their birth.14

As we now know, the seemingly unlikely did happen, and the apartheid regime did eventually bow before the African nationalist storm and negotiate its way out of power. Correspondingly, that the remarkable did happen renders the study of how whites are adapting to their loss of racial power all the more intriguing. This leads on to my second further reason for studying South Africa’s whites today. Fredrickson’s crystal-ball gazing suggested that even if whites did give up 13 R.W. Johnson, How Long Will South Africa Survive? London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1977. 14 George Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History, Oxford, New York, Toronto, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1981, pp. 281–2.

10

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

political power, they might still be in trouble unless they simultaneously accepted the need to share ‘economic resources in an equitable way’. The warning was apt, for in recent times, a substantial body of literature has grown which argues that white privilege, embodied in ‘whiteness’, has continued well beyond 1994, and as a result, seriously undermines the substance of South African democracy.15 This demands some brief engagement. It did not use the term until recently, but South African scholarship has long dwelt upon ‘whiteness’ in the sense that it has sought to elaborate the origins, nature and underpinnings of white supremacy. Central to this has been explication of the relationship between race and state in the making, sustaining and constraining of capitalism in South Africa and, following from that, the relationships between race and class. Indeed, today, it is widely argued that while race ceased to operate as a formal mechanism of political and legal inequality with the arrival of democracy in 1994, it continues to grease the wheels of the economy, which continues to be dominated by whites. Although whites now retain little formal political influence, they continue to enjoy disproportionate economic power and advantage by virtue of their ownership of resources and their access to informal networks of business and expertise. However, although it argues that race continues to play a critical role in the allocation of resources, the recent study of ‘whiteness’ in South Africa has drawn much of its inspiration from a burgeoning international (notably American) literature which has come to the fore as populist politicians in numerous countries of the Global North fan antagonisms against blacks, Hispanics, immigrants and various ‘others’ among majority white populations, fuelling a rising tide of extremist far-right ‘white nationalisms’. The following useful definition of whiteness has been provided by David Goldberg: ‘the relative privilege, profit and power of those occupying the structural social positions of whites in a hierarchically ordered racial society’.16 Conceptualizing whiteness in this way rests on a huge legacy of scholarship that argues for the centrality of racial ordering in the development of global capitalism and imperialism.17 Although fascinating, this need not detain us here, except insofar as to stress that because whites were placed at the top of this hierNotably, Melissa Steyn, ‘Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used to Be’: White Identity in a Changing South Africa, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2001; and Sharlene Swartz, Another County: Everyday Restitution, Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2016. 16 David Goldberg, The Racial State, London, Blackwell, 2002, p. 248. 17 Key contributions include Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, Richmond, VA, University of North Carolina Press, 1944; C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, London, Secker and Warburg, 1938; and Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Nairobi, East African Educational Publishers; Washington, DC, Howard University Press, 1972. 15

Introduction

11

archy, positive characteristics – such as civilization and modernity – were to be ascribed to their whiteness. Correspondingly, negative characteristics – such as savagery and backwardness – were attributed to those who were not white. An important contribution in this regard is embodied in the notion of ‘the Racial Contract’, which, according to Charles W. Mills, underpins a global system of racial power (or white supremacy, although it is rarely acknowledged as such). Mills argues that, historically, political thought has been developed by whites, who have taken their racial privilege so much for granted that they have never recognized it as constituting a form of domination. Hence when the early social contractarians (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, etc.) sketched out a metamorphosis from ‘natural man’ to ‘civil/political man’ and from the resident of a state of nature to the citizen of a political society, they assumed that such a man was white. Accordingly, when contract theory was translated to the white settler state, the outcome was that it was only white men who were defined as belonging to civil society, whereas non-white men were placed outside it, as ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ residents of a state of nature characterized as wilderness, jungle and wasteland.18 The racial contract is thereby taken to explain how the social contract came to form the basis for an unjust, exploitative society. Mills’ theorizing builds upon prior denunciations of whiteness by black writers whose work was to highlight the psychological as well as the social and economic dynamics of white supremacy. An early contribution (which echoes widely in South Africa) was made by the black American, W.E.B. Du Bois, who argued how whiteness served as a psychological wage to poor whites exploited under racial capitalism in the United States, and how anti-blackness served as a gratification to white Americans.19 Frantz Fanon, born in the French West Indies, explored the psychological dimensions of colonialism, viewing the attribution of negative qualities to blackness as key to the exercise of colonial power. Negativity was internalized by blacks, and as a consequence, colonized people were easily seduced into wearing a white mask to negotiate their survival in colonial society.20 His ideas were to prove a major influence in the development of the ideology of Black Consciousness in the South Africa of the 1970s. They were drawn upon most notably by Steve Biko, the young activist who urged the necessity of blacks ridding themselves of any sense of racial inferiority, inspiring a generation of young black South Africans to dissociate themselves from the paternalistic leadership of white liberals and organize themselves Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1997; Black Rights/White Wrongs, New York, Oxford University Press, 2017. 19 W.E.B. du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay towards a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in an attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America 1860–1880, New York: The Free Press, 1998. 20 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, London, Pluto Press, 1986; The Wretched of the Earth, London, Penguin, 1967. 18

12

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

independently.21 He was brutally murdered by state security officials in 1977, but his subversive influence was not to die with him, and his ideas continue to be drawn upon by black activists who assert that there is a continuing white domination over many aspects of South African society today.22 Central to such thinking is the claim that because racism is no longer respectable, it is deliberately obscured. According to Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a general reluctance to admit to racism has given rise to an ideology of ‘colour-blind racism’. Based on research about how whites deal with race in the United States, he outlines how whites use colour-blind racism to reproduce racial inequality. Thus, ‘abstract liberalism’, the use of liberal ideas such as equality of opportunity or freedom of choice, is deployed in a manner which ignores or denies structural factors (such as differentials in opportunity, income and wealth). Although rationalized as ‘meritocracy’, in practice its outcome confirms racial inequality. Fundamentally, his argument is that because post-civil rights racial norms in the United States do not permit the open expression of racial views, whites have developed coded ways of voicing them. Colour-blind racism therefore allows the reproduction of racial inequality by permitting people to engage in discriminatory actions without being labelled as racist.23 Correspondingly, drawing upon Fanon, critics argue that, notwithstanding the arrival of the liberal democracy in South Africa in 1994, whites remain possessed of a collective ‘colonial unconscious’.24 They take their lead from Biko’s assertion that white society in the South Africa of his day was homogeneous, born into privilege, and ‘in the ultimate analysis no white person (could) escape being part of the oppressor camp’.25 From this was to follow his highly critical analysis of white liberalism under apartheid (a critique which, as Chapter 8 will demonstrate, continues to carry a heavy punch today). That the concept of whiteness has proved so widely influential attests to its provocation and fertility. Necessarily, it has provided much inspiration to the writing of this book. However, this is not to say that it is unproblematic.26 Its 21 Steve Biko, I Write What I Like, London, Heineman, 1987. 22 See Xolela Mangcu, Biko: A Biography, Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2012. 23 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 2013. 24 Peter Hudson, ‘The State and the Colonial Unconscious’, Social Dynamic, 39, 2, 2013, pp. 263–77. 25 Biko, I Write What I Like, pp. 19–23. 26 The literature, which has only been briefly touched upon here, is huge. See, inter alia, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic (eds), Critical White Studies: Looking behind the Mirror, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1997; and their Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, New York, New York University Press, 2001. Also, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil T. Gotanda, Gary Peller and Kendall Thomas, Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement, New York, The New Press, 1996.

Introduction

13

adversaries complain that, too often, whiteness scholars assume the homogeneity of white practices, ideas and attitudes and that being white is synonymous with being racist. They point out that in each and every society characterized by racial inequality, there have always been whites who have sought to shun racism. Hence, in South Africa, throughout the country’s history, there have been whites who have challenged racism, whether as self-avowed Christians, liberals, communists or whatever. While the extent to which they succeeded may remain a matter of debate, the major point must be to query the extent to which their activities can be dismissed in any meaningful way as racist.27 Although whiteness scholars vigorously rebut such claims and assert that they fully recognize class, cultural and other differences among whites, they continue to grapple with the problem of whether whites are actually able to escape their racial consciousness. In post-apartheid society, this line of argumentation can translate into critiques of anti-racist discourse by whites as acts designed to prove their non-racism. While this may be true in some or even all cases, there is an element of circularity in the argument which makes it difficult to disprove. What follows from all this is that the whiteness literature incorporates a significant normative dimension and is constructed around understandings of what behaviour in a democratic society should be. Indeed, Biko’s message to sympathetic whites was precisely that they should focus upon addressing the pathologies of white consciousness rather than in seeking the freedom of blacks, from whom they were blocked from claiming credible identification by reason of their racial privilege. Correspondingly, in contemporary South Africa, there are urgent calls for whites to correct their thoughts and behaviour in an appropriately non-racial manner. However, the danger here is the whiteness literature being so prescriptive that it becomes sociologically over-ambitious. While it may be highly desirable that whites should collectively reflect upon their past and present relationships with other communities, how deep is such self-­ reflection likely to go? How should we expect such a debate to be conducted? Will any resultant change in attitudes take place immediately as a result of such self-­reflection by whites, or will it only take place over a generation or more? In short, the suspicion remains that while the whiteness literature may help explain the world to intellectuals, it is less likely to find resonance among the large body of ordinary whites who may feel threatened by aspects of the ‘new South Africa’ and who may be as likely to retreat into a laager of defensiveness as to fully embrace the tenets of non-racialism. Equally, it is unsurprising that very often accusations are made that whites are in denial about the horrors and brutalities of apartheid and unwilling to contemplate the impact they have made upon the present. It follows from this that if whites are to engage in South African democracy constructively, they need to confront the past and admit to it. 27 See, for instance, ‘The Problem with Race Politics’, Chapter 22 in Helen Zille, Not without a Fight: The Autobiography, Cape Town, Penguin, 2016, pp. 477–96.

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa

There is much substance to this argument, even though the extent to which such attitudes continue to prevail needs to be explored empirically. To what extent is it actually true that whites are in denial about the past? Are some whites more in denial than others, and if so, what are the criteria we use to determine non-racial virtue from the lack of it? Further, what are the implications if a large body of whites continue to remain in denial or to contest the narrative of ‘white guilt’? Again, it must be stressed that, as far as possible, such issues need to be answered empirically, rather than any answers being predetermined by the manner in which the questions are posed. All these various issues bring us back to the issue of ‘nation-building’. The immediate problem in South Africa is that none of the established approaches to the national question take us very far in understanding what is required of whites (or indeed, other minorities) in the democratic era, beyond the fact that they should accept the legitimacy of democracy and de facto black majority rule. The Congress and Africanist traditions both assert that whites were, or provided, the ruling class before 1994 and place emphasis upon the goal of achieving substantive rather than merely formal political racial equality. Furthermore, insofar as they assert the inevitability, desirability or necessity of socialism, they run up against the undeniable fact that today South Africa is located within an overwhelmingly capitalist world and is unlikely to undergo a transition to socialism in any meaningful sense. In contrast, rainbowism is less explicit about this, and equality is less central to its concerns, its fundamental message being that democracy offers the prospect of South Africa’s different peoples living together peacefully and cooperatively. In sum, when it comes to the crunch, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that all these approaches are uncertain or vague about the role of whites in the making of a democracy. Basically, there are two polar positions. One is that whites have failed to adapt and remain fundamentally anti-democratic, clinging to their racial privilege. The other is that they have changed and become willing citizens of post-apartheid democracy and are prepared to forgo their racial privilege. Any consideration of which of these two assertions most accurately describes the manner in which whites have adapted to democracy and what progress has been made towards the realization of a non-racial society will require careful analysis based upon empirical exploration. How I have chosen to approach the issue is outlined below.

Whites’ politics in post-apartheid South Africa Exploring how whites have adapted to political change in South Africa has already been the subject of a number of distinguished studies. Most influential of all has been Melissa Steyn’s pathbreaking analysis of changing patterns of ‘whiteness’ in post-apartheid South Africa, outlining how a master narrative

Introduction

15

of whiteness which was dominant among whites before 1994 has fallen apart, forcing them to renegotiate their identities. She points to a reluctance among whites to talk about race, and discusses how non-racialism is often recast in the mould of liberal colour-blindness. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for a constructive engagement with the past, and for whites to ‘confront the extent to which their identities and personal expectations have been shaped through asymmetrical power relations, both within South Africa, and globally’. She proceeds to demonstrate throughout her book how the ‘different narratives of what it means to be white are vying for legitimation in the hearts and minds of white South Africans’.28 Steyn, therefore, is primarily concerned with identifying and understanding the different styles and content of white identity in post-­ apartheid South Africa. In related work, Rebecca Davies has provided a far-reaching account of Afrikaners in the New South Africa, exploring how the formerly dominant ethnic minority has adapted to the loss of political power at the same time as Afrikaner capital has enjoyed a substantial rise in economic influence.29 In a parallel account, Daniel Conway and Pauline Leonard have provided a focus upon ‘the British’ in South Africa, who, because of Afrikaner political prominence before 1994, have too often been ignored. Central to their treatment is that although these particular whites do not hold back from identifying with South Africa, they simultaneously retain a strong sense of identification with British nationality – if not to the contemporary United Kingdom, then at least to an imagined community of Britishness with shared characteristics and a sense of culture.30 Clive Glaser has similarly suggested that whites of Portuguese extraction share a transnational hybridized identity which spans religious and political as well as racial dimensions.31 These major studies have been supplemented by an ever-increasing multiplicity of academic articles and journalistic accounts of how whites in South Africa are adjusting to the rapid changes going on around them, along with a reviving historical emphasis on how white societies across southern Africa were divided and riven with class tensions even during the era of white minority rule.32 28 Melissa Steyn, ‘Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used to Be’, pp. xxxi–xxxii. 29 Rebecca Davies, Afrikaners in the New South Africa: Identity Politics in the New South Africa, London, New York, I.B. Taurus, 2009. 30 Daniel Conway and Pauline Leonard, Migration, Space and Transnational Identities: the British in South Africa, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 31 Clive Glaser, ‘Portuguese Immigrant History in Twentieth Century South Africa: A Preliminary Overview’, African Historical Review, 24, 2, 2010, pp. 61–83. 32 Duncan Money and Danielle van Zyl-Hermann (eds), Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa, London, Routledge, 2020; and Danielle van Zyl-Hermann, Privileged Precariat: White Workers and South Africa’s Long Transition to Majority Rule,

16

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

The present book seeks to build upon this burgeoning body of work by providing an explicit focus upon how whites have adapted politically to the arrival of democracy. Rather than its principal focus being upon the elaboration of white identities, it sets out to explore whether whites accept the fundamental premises of the liberal-democratic state. How is it that a white minority which gave such strong backing to the apartheid state after 1948 was brought to concede to democracy? What were their concerns about democracy, and how were these assuaged – if they were? How, more than a quarter of a century after the arrival of democracy, do they view the racial injustices of the past? Do they accept the need to go beyond formal political equality to a more substantive progression to social and economic equality? Furthermore, importantly, how do they behave politically? Which parties do they vote for, why and how do these parties represent them? This book poses these and other such questions by offering what is admittedly an eclectic mix of historical, political and economic discussion combined empirically with the analysis of the transcripts of eight focus groups, composed of carefully selected samples of whites, which were held around the country in October 2019 – that is, some months after South Africa’s fifth democratic general elections and before the onset of Covid-19. The methodology used to select and conduct these focus groups is detailed in the Appendix. Social scientists (and others) use focus groups to explore people’s views and experiences regarding a specific set of topics. In this case, they have been used to capture whites’ experiences in a post-apartheid South Africa and their attitudes to their loss of racial power, their explanatory aspect lying not only in their capacity to uncover differing assessments of different (public and private) issues but also the ‘meanings that lie behind these group assessments’, this latter requiring interpretation by the researcher.33 Part One is devoted to how South Africa transited from being a settler state, and what I describe as a Herrenvolk democracy for whites, to its present proclaimed non-racialism. Although much of the content of Chapter 1 will be familiar to many readers, my argument is that it is instructive to think about contemporary South Africa as a ‘failed settler state’, how the country’s whites were brought together as a ‘nation’ and how this nation thought of itself, acted and was eventually compelled by circumstances beyond its control to concede a transition to non-racial democracy. Subsequently, Chapter 2 deals with one of the great ironies of the resulting transition – that is, how both the ruling NP, which hitherto had decried liberalism as tantamount to racial treachery, and the ANC, which had carefully distanced itself from ‘white liberalism’, ended up forging a deal around a highly progressive liberal-democratic constitution.

33

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021. Michael Bloor, Jane Frankland, Michelle Thomas and Kate Robson, Focus Groups In Social Research, London, Sage, 2001, p. 4.

Introduction

17

Although often described as ‘peaceful’, in practice this process was fraught. It follows that no account of the transition can be complete without some discussion of the critical role played by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which, much to the chagrin of the NP government and the ‘securocrats’ that had backed it, was established in late 1995 to ground the new democracy in a ‘dealing with the past’. The subsequent literature on the limitations and achievements of the TRC has become vast. While touching upon the broad thrust of this, the primary focus of Chapter 3 is on the evasion of accountability by politicians and securocrats for crimes against humanity committed in the name of apartheid, this matched by an account of the wider reluctance of the majority of whites at the time to accept either collective or individual responsibility for past racial oppression. Nonetheless, the chapter warns against glib condemnation of whites, for reckonings with the past in divided societies are rarely accomplished easily or swiftly. Accordingly, by drawing from the discussions which transpired in the focus groups, Chapter 4 considers how, more than two decades into democracy, ‘ordinary whites’ now look back on the TRC and the profound issues of political and moral responsibility it sought to address. While the answer it gives is that there is no unambiguous ‘white view’ of the past, it argues that today most whites are quite prepared to admit the moral wrongness of apartheid. Nonetheless, it remains easier for most, for good reasons and bad, to deflect blame for apartheid’s oppressions on to the political and security elite rather than accepting any wider sense of collective responsibility. Part One concludes by noting that this feeds into a widespread sense of disillusionment about significant aspects of living in post-apartheid South Africa. Part Two turns to how whites have responded to the arrival of democracy. Against the background of survey material indicating the extent of white foreboding about majority rule in the late 1980s, Chapter 5 outlines how key white concerns were catered for by protections relating to property, schooling and language rights offered by the constitution, before proceeding to offer the author’s own assessment of the impact of ANC rule upon whites’ social and material well-being, as indicated by a diverse array of economic and other data. Notwithstanding the conclusion that, overall, the worst of white fears are exaggerated and material prosperity has been largely maintained, Chapter 6 suggests that while the majority greeted the arrival of democracy with considerable relief, accepting that there was no better alternative on offer, they today share a widespread belief that the fabric of democracy, and its prospects, have deteriorated substantially since the early days of Nelson Mandela’s presidency, most of the responsibility for this lying with the ANC. As a result, many are tempted by a sense of victimhood, as they now see the white population as being subject to a ‘reverse racism’. South Africa, many whites appear to agree, is on the way down. Nonetheless, Chapter 7 indicates that all is not gloom. Despite all the perceived disadvantages which are ascribed to being white in contemporary South Africa, there is simultaneous determination to remain in the country and to make the

18

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

best of life as it is. Importantly, there is limited nostalgia for apartheid, even if there is a declining enthusiasm about South Africa’s democracy as it exists today. Part Two concludes with a change of gear and moves away from the focus group material to examine, first, in Chapter 8, the role of the Democratic Alliance (DA) because of its pre-eminent role among the parties of opposition, examining the extent to which its formal commitment to political liberalism has translated into the representation of minority (and especially white) interests, and how this plays out across the broader political canvas. This leads into a particular focus in Chapter 9 upon how Afrikaners (the previously dominant white ethnic group under apartheid) have adapted politically since 1994. This argues that adept economic repositioning by the Afrikaner elite and middle class has been matched by the reappearance among Afrikaners of a class (albeit a small one) of ‘poor whites’. Amid this diversity, Afrikaners remain largely conservative. However, few are outrightly right-wing, and most oscillate between what are termed inclusive and exclusive political orientations, the former implying willingness to engage in cross-cultural political alignments, the latter being more inward-looking and culturally specific. Finally, the last substantive chapter looks at whites as citizens, its thrust being that while whites have engaged in what it terms the ‘politics of representation’ in much the same way as black citizens, their engagements in the ‘the politics of recognition’ and ‘the politics of redistribution’ have been largely defensive. The concluding chapter, which constitutes Part Three, asks whether ‘there is still white in the rainbow’. Despite its many reservations, the answer that this book gives is cautiously optimistic.

Part One

From Settlers to Democracy ‘Without a white man’s country where were white folk to go, and what were they to do?’ Bill Schwarz, The White Man’s World, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 428.

1 The Politics of White Rule Prior to the discovery of gold and diamonds in the Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State in the late nineteenth century, the territories of the future South Africa were widely regarded as offering only marginal economic prospects for white settlement. The Boers (forebears of today’s Afrikaners) were widely considered to be backward and primitive, and although the British colonies of the Cape and Natal offered some opportunity for agricultural and mercantile development, the militant resistance of much larger black populations to white territorial encroachment, involving costly and brutal wars, severely limited their appeal. Perceptions were only to change once it became known that South Africa possessed vast mineral resources, which resulted in a significant influx of settlers from Britain and elsewhere. Even so, South Africa’s attractions were never able to compete on equal terms with the other more established British territories of settlement such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In no other British settler territory was settlement so fraught. In order to secure free access to the newly discovered mineral resources for its nationals, Britain had launched an enormously expensive and brutal war against the two Boer republics in order to establish imperial hegemony. Confronted by a wily enemy which used unconventional tactics over a vast land, the British forces were to suffer numerous setbacks and humiliations before their superior numbers and resources resulted in the eventual defeat of the Boers. However, Britain’s victory in the Anglo-Boer war of 1899–19021 was a hollow one, and left widespread devastation, Boer impoverishment, resultant resentment and massive social dislocation in its wake. Correspondingly, the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 out of four former predecessor territories (the British colonies of the Cape and Natal alongside the Transvaal and Orange Free State) represented a major climb-down whereby the British state under a newly installed Liberal government resolved to concede political control to those who had been defeated on the battlefield in exchange for guarantees about the security of British mining, financial and other interests. 1

Although now more correctly known as the South African war in recognition of the large numbers of blacks who fought and laboured on both sides.

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa

Union was hailed as an act of far-sighted magnanimity by the British.2 The imbalance between the ‘Dutch’ and ‘English-speaking’ white populations was such that the former had the potential to dominate politically, were they to unite (the subordination of the indigenous population being assumed). In reality, the British had not wanted the bother and expense of ruling a hostile and embittered Boer population, and accordingly had made deals with leaders of their former foes in an attempt to forge an entente between the ‘Afrikaner’ and ‘English-­speaking’ white populations while securing continued access to and profitability of the territory’s mining industry. However, it was not just that Afrikaner domination of the political sphere was off-putting to many potential settler immigrants but also that the ‘native question’ appeared to be particularly intractable.

Settler colonialism and its demise British settler states in North America, Australia and New Zealand had proved able to ‘solve’ their native questions through a mix of genocide, political domination, disease and marginalization, reducing indigenous populations to powerless minorities. In contrast, in South Africa, the exploitation of diamonds and gold required the extensive exploitation of black labour. By the time of the Union in 1910, the African peoples of South Africa had been militarily defeated, and defeat had been followed by the imposition of a regime which guaranteed seemingly limitless supplies of cheap black migrant workers. Involving the massive appropriation of African land, its allocation to white commercial farmers, the shunting of Africans into native reserves while denying them political rights, this reduced the African majority population to servitude. Nonetheless, it was clear to even the most myopic of settlers that the ‘native question’ would never go away. In many ways, settler colonialism in Africa was remarkably successful, establishing capitalist states which became economically self-propelling. Settlers’ capitalist instincts and access to capital, along with their state-backed acquisition of vast supplies of land and labour, constituted a productive combination. In South Africa, exploitation of seemingly limitless mineral resources by settlers in association with British capital led to a level of industrial development without equal on the African continent. In Kenya and Rhodesia, where no such comparable mineral resources existed, settler capitalism nonetheless led to far higher levels of industrialization than in African territories under direct colonialism. However, the more extensive the level of capitalist development, the more settler 2

Jan Smuts, Boer general and later prime minister of South Africa, is cited as saying: ‘They gave us back our country in everything but name. Has such a miracle of trust and magnanimity happened before? Only the English could do it. They may make mistakes, but they are big people’. (Graham Viney, The Last Hurrah: South Africa and the Royal Tour of 1947, Johannesburg and Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2018, p. 50.)

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society summoned up hostile classes among the subordinate races. The political significance of such class formation under settler colonialism was profound.3 White settlers in Africa were always cognizant of their being minorities among much larger racially subordinated populations, and of the fact that they maintained their rule by force and violence. Accordingly, they recognized the long-term threat posed by the emergence of African middle and working classes. However, the more they sought to contain threats from below by political repression, the more they blocked off potential for mutual accommodation. The more politically intransigent they became, the more they propelled oppressed races into taking up armed struggle. Such trajectories rendered settler colonialism in Africa increasingly dangerous to, yet simultaneously dependent upon, external metropolitan support. In the post-1945 era of decolonization, global realpolitik was to dictate that the latter should be withdrawn. Nationalism in Algeria triumphed only after a particularly violent war whose costs ultimately persuaded the French to withdraw their support for the colons. The British intervened decisively to defeat anti-settler violence in Kenya but had little hesitation in withdrawing their political support from white settlers in favour of an accommodation with conservative African nationalists. In colonial Zimbabwe, a recalcitrant settler regime proved able to confront a liberation war only so long as it could depend upon a lack of decisive action by Britain (the formal colonial power) and backing by South Africa. Once this began to change from the late 1970s, all was lost. True, settler colonialism in South Africa proved far more resilient than elsewhere in Africa. By the 1980s, the minority regime had developed the strongest state and most powerful military machine on the continent. Ultimately, however, it, too, was forced to engineer a democratic compromise.4 South Africa became what Göran Therborn has termed ‘a failed settler state’.5 A massive exodus of whites followed independence in Africa’s colonies. Over one million whites fled Algeria in the wake of independence in 1962. ‘Europeans’ living in Kenya numbered 56,000 out of a population of 8.3 million at independence in 1963; by 2009, there were just 67,000 whites out of a population of over 38 million, nearly half of these being ‘expatriates’ rather than Kenyan citizens. After the coup in Portugal which led to the colonial withdrawal, there was a mass departure of Portuguese from both Angola and Mozambique.6 In Zimba3 4 5 6

Kenneth Good, ‘Settler Colonialism: Economic Development and Class Formation’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 14, 4, 1975, pp. 597–620. Gerald L’Ange, The White Africans: From Colonisation to Liberation, Johannesburg and Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2005. Goran Therborn, Cities of Power: The Urban, The National, The Popular, The Global, London and New York, Verso Books, 2017, pp. 70–106. Clive Glaser, ‘Portuguese Immigrant History in Twentieth Century South Africa: A Preliminary Overview’, African Historical Review, 24, 2, 2010, pp. 61–3.

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bwe, the white population peaked at 296,000 (8 per cent of the total) in 1975 but had collapsed to less than 30,000 out of nearly 17 million by 2012. Today, apart from remnant white populations of settlement in countries such as eSwatini (Swaziland) and Zambia, whites in Africa are largely those who are resident for a few years to work, have fun and make money. The only exceptions to these tales of mass departure are South Africa and Namibia, where significant white populations (of about 8 per cent of the populations) remain. The large body of whites in these two countries continue to consider themselves as living at home. The transition to democracy implies that South Africa’s white ‘settlers’ have become ‘citizens’. Even so, the settler state has left a very strong imprint. After all, for the large part of South African history, it was whites who claimed that it was they, and they alone, who constituted the South African nation. It was only they who were citizens.

Race and citizenship after Union The installation of race as the principle of political and social organization was the deliberate doing of Britain and ‘whites’ at the formation of the Union in 1910. Prior to that, it is true, a significant degree of white self-consciousness was already in place. However, as Michael MacDonald has elaborated, colour consciousness had not yet created the primary political communities: When whites were ethno-culturally homogeneous, speaking Dutch, Afrikaans, and the dialects bridging them, worshipping in Calvinist churches, and professing similar values, they did not require embracing identities as whites. Parochial identities served nicely, insofar as ‘whites’ – or ‘Afrikaners’ or ‘Europeans’ or ‘settlers’ or ‘burghers’ or ‘God’s chosen people’ – were homogeneous culturally. But when British settlers arrived, and whites at once became more heterogeneous and the supremacy of the original ones became more precarious, the grope for racial partnership created the basis for whites as a unified political community. Races were fashioned precisely because of ethno-cultural differences, not irrespective of them.7

The outbreak of the Boer War proved conclusively that colour alone had not produced a politically cohesive community of whites. Colour was not irrelevant (both sides avoided arming Africans for combat) but what whites shared as whites was eclipsed by what divided them politically and ethno-­culturally. This was to bequeath a bitter legacy to the new state, which was also to be severely tested by violent intra-white class struggles (between mining houses and white mineworkers and between subsistence Afrikaner farmers and commercial farmers) which were themselves reinforced by ethno-cultural rivalries.

7

Michael MacDonald, Why Race Matters in South Africa, Scottsville, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2006, p. 44.

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At the inception of the state, therefore, the unity of whites was strained to snapping point. What held whites together in the face of their differences and mediated their conflicts, what elevated race over competing identities and made it the basis of a political community, was self-government. It endowed whites with common interests, common identities, and common threats.8 The word ‘citizen’ does not appear in the Union of South Africa Act of 1909. It provided for the election of a bicameral parliament but left it to this parliament to prescribe who should be entitled to vote. Prior to the Union, there had been strong resistance by the representatives of the Orange Free State and Transvaal to any prospect of extending the Cape’s formally non-racial franchise, whereby a small but significant minority of black and Coloured males who had met certain property and educational qualifications had acquired the right to vote. The outcome was a compromise.9 On the one hand, the right to vote was restricted to ‘European males’ in the Free State and Transvaal, with a very similar outcome in Natal, where the number of black voters who had qualified for the vote had always been minimal. On the other hand, it provided for the continuance of the existing formally non-racial franchise in the Cape, where white politicians were dependent upon the votes of black and Coloured voters in a number of constituencies. In time, this compromise was to become a matter of great contention, for, fatefully, the Act also provided that the non-racial franchise could be abolished if a Bill seeking to do so was passed by the two houses of parliament (the House of Assembly and the Senate) sitting together by a two-thirds majority.10 It was under this provision that parliament removed those blacks in the Cape and Natal who were qualified to vote from the common roll in 1936, placing them instead on a separate ‘native voters’ roll which restricted them to voting for a total of seven whites to represent their interests in parliament. It was under this same provision that the NP abolished the Coloured vote in 1956, albeit using blatant constitutional chicanery to do so. By this time, however, the overall value of the black vote had been diluted by the extension of the franchise to white women over twenty-one in 1930 and a year later to the minority of white men over twenty-­one in the Cape and Natal who hitherto had been left without it by reason of their failure to meet minimum educational and property qualifications.11 8 MacDonald, Why Race Matters, p. 45. 9 Formally, the Orange Free State became the Orange River Colony between the time of the Boer’s defeat by Britain and Britain’s restoration of ‘self-government’ in 1907, but for simplicity’s sake, I have retained the former name. 10 The Union of South Africa Act of 1909, Section 35, 1. 11 For a still valuable review of these enactments, see Colin Tatz, Shadow and Substance in South Africa: A Study in Land and Franchise Policies affecting Africans, 1910–1960, Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1962.

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By initially enabling the Cape Colony’s formally colour-blind franchise to co-exist with the all-white franchises of the former Boer republics, the Act of Union assuaged liberal white sentiment, which clung to the idea that Christianity and education would slowly but surely lead to a steady expansion of the number of Africans and Coloureds who would qualify for the vote. However, this ran up against what in white society was presented as the intractable nature of the ‘native problem’: in essence, how to maintain and justify the political and economic domination of the black majority by the white minority. The solution was found in the ideology and practice of ‘segregation’. This argued that the overwhelming mass of the African population remained trapped in a state of backwardness and barbarism, whereas whites had attained a far higher level of civilization. It followed, accordingly, that whites were entrusted with leading Africans to a higher state of human development. However, while Africans should be encouraged or induced to encounter modernity by working in the whites’ more advanced economy, differences between white and black were so great that, for their mutual good and happiness, they should live side by side in segregated or ‘parallel’ societies. By exalting race over ethno-cultural communities, the Act of Union had recast the basis of governance. Whereas previously racial identities had been fluid, the state now used racial categories to specify who could marry whom, who could own land, who had the vote, who could carry guns and who could move freely around the country. All this was to be elaborated in segregationist practice and legislation. In short, racial identities now came to be organized on the basis of their relationship to state power. What made whites ‘white’ and others ‘black’ was not solely colour or culture, but citizenship.12

Dual white nationalisms after Union After Union, conventional wisdom regarded the country as made up of two ‘nations’, ‘Boer and Brit’, or ‘Dutch and English-speaking’, struggling for domination between themselves. This struggle constituted the first effort to resolve South Africa’s ‘national question’.13 The first census, undertaken in 1911, recorded a total of 1,276,319 whites, just over a fifth of a total population of 5,972,000. It was at this stage unclear how the white population broke down, although there was never any doubt that the ‘Dutch’ constituted a majority, nearly 55 per cent of the white population being recorded as adherents of the various Dutch Reformed Churches (DRCs), compared to 36 per cent belonging to other protestant denominations. This was always to remain of considerable significance, providing the wherewithal 12 MacDonald, Why Race Matters, pp. 46–8. 13 No Sizwe (Neville Alexander), One Azania, One Nation: The National Question in South Africa, London, Zed Press, 1979.

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for the former to outnumber ‘English-speakers’ if they were to forge political unity. This was to constitute the project of those who were to drive the formation of the Afrikaner ‘nation’. Following the Union, the first government, under the first prime minister Louis Botha, sought to encourage immigration from Europe.14 Thousands came. The immigrants who were most favoured, because they were deemed to be the most easily assimilable, were those from Britain, Germany and Holland. Those who came from Southern Europe (notably Italy and Greece) and Eastern Europe were deemed less desirable.15 This foreign influx had two implications. The first was that, as far as some Afrikaner politicians were concerned, it threatened to tilt the ethnic balance in favour of non-Afrikaners. This was to result in the passage of the first immigration act in 1921, which increased barriers to entry. The second was that while the majority of those who were described as ‘English-speaking’ may have hailed directly from or had ancestors who had arrived from the British Isles, this segment of the white population was always diverse. If it was to find political unity, it had to do so on the basis of some imputed commonality within the new Union. Initially it was Botha and his deputy, Jan Smuts, who were to emerge as the standard bearers of appeals to a broad South Africanism which would bring Afrikaners, ‘English-speakers’ and others of ‘European’ origin together. The ambition was stated by Smuts: The whole meaning of Union in South Africa is this: We are going to create a nation – a nation which will be of a composite character, including Dutch, German, English and Jew, and whatever white nationality seeks refuge in this land – all can combine. All will be welcome.16

Former Boer generals who had turned to rebuilding South Africa after the devastation of the war, they had come to advocate the retention of close ties with the British Empire, citing the economic and international advantages that this would bring. In contrast, the memory of British ruthlessness during the recent war remained strong among the many Afrikaners who rejected any hint of Britishness and regarded Botha’s and Smuts’ advocacy of close ties to the Empire as traitorous. They were to provide the popular basis for an exclusivist Afrikaner nationalism which began to take firm shape in the early 1920s.17 14 Botha simultaneously sought to block the entry of Indians (it being the official mantra at the time that Indians within the country would be sent back ‘home’ at some point in the future). 15 Edna Bradlow, Immigration into the Union 1910–1948: Policies and Attitudes, PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, Vol. 1, 1978. 16 W.K. Hancock, Smuts: The Fields of Force 1919–1950, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1968, p. 36. 17 For classic studies, see T. Dunbar Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid and the Afrikaner Civil Religion, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University

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The two traditions were to be played out across different parties and governments. Broadly speaking, we see the conciliatory tradition, which seeks to forge a white nation across English-speaking and Afrikaner lines, first exemplified in party clothing by the South African Party (SAP) of Botha (prime minister from 1910 until his death in 1919) and Smuts (prime minister from 1919 to 1924). Subsequently, it appeared in the guise of the United Party (UP), forged by the ‘fusion’ of the SAP with the now-ruling NP, which was led by another former Boer general, J.B.M. Hertzog, in 1934. The latter had become prime minister in 1924, when a first iteration of the NP had formed a coalition government with the Labour Party, before winning a further election outright in 1929. Although strongly motivated by anti-imperial sentiment, the NP under Hertzog proved willing to smother its differences with the Botha–Smuts tradition in order to tackle the effects upon the economy of the Great Depression. The Hertzog– Smuts government was to remain intact until 1939, when it foundered upon Hertzog losing a motion in parliament to keep South Africa out of the Second World War. Smuts then returned as prime minister and held office until he lost the election of 1948. The cultural nationalist tradition found its first expression in the formation of the NP by Hertzog in 1915 in opposition to Botha’s decision to back the Empire by taking South Africa into the First World War. It was to come to the fore in the Hertzog-led Pact Government of 1924 (although the NP’s coalition with the English-speaking-led Labour Party required it to downplay its antipathy to the imperial connection) and the Hertzog NP government of 1929–33. Thereafter, however, the battle between the two traditions was to take place as much within the NP as between the two major parties. In 1931, the Depression tipped Hertzog into coalition with Smuts. Accompanied by extensive intra-party negotiation and debate, this was strongly opposed by a more purist, nationalist wing of the NP, led by D.F. Malan. Its bitter disagreements with Hertzog culminated in rupture in 1934, when Malan and his followers repudiated fusion and crossed over to the opposition benches, claiming the continuing existence of the NP. Their quarrel with Hertzog revolved around two major issues. First, the rebels deeply distrusted Hertzog’s claim that the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 provided an adequate guarantee of South Africa’s constitutional independence. The second was that while fusion would indeed re-unite Afrikaners who had been divided across the two parties, the SAP was home to many English-speakers, typified by Malan as ‘jingoes’, whose attachment to the Empire transcended their loyalty to South Africa.18 of California Press, 1975; and Dan O’Meara, Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism 1934–1948, Braamfontein, Ravan Press, 1983. 18 Lindie Koorts, D.F. Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism, Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2014, pp. 247–301.

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Eventually, the Malan tendency was to triumph. Mobilization of Afrikaner nationalist sentiment by a variety of Afrikaans-language, cultural and economic organizations during the 1930s came to fruition with the departure of Hertzog and his followers from the governing UP in 1939, following his breach with Smuts over South Africa’s entry into the war. The resultant re-unification of the NP (as the Herenigde [Re-united] National Party) was far from easy, as tensions between Malan and Hertzog played out to a messy conclusion, the latter choosing to withdraw from politics in pique, while a minority of his supporters hived off into a separate Afrikaner Party. But after the war, it reached its successful climax, with the NP’s electoral triumph over Smuts in 1948, its absorption of the Hertzogite Afrikaner Party in 1951 and the party’s subsequent domination of the political arena until 1994.19

From segregation to apartheid The fundamental story of the 1948 election is that the NP won more seats (70) than the UP (65) but lost the popular vote by a substantial margin (37.6 per cent of the votes cast compared to the UP’s 49.2 per cent). It only secured an effective majority in the 150-strong House of Assembly via an electoral arrangement with the Afrikaner Party. The imbalanced result was an outcome of three principal factors. The first was the practice of the Delimitation Commission (which decided constituency boundaries) of ‘loading’ urban seats (a loaded seat being one with more voters than the average number of voters per constituency for all seats). This meant that fewer votes were needed to win seats in rural areas (where Afrikaners predominated) than in urban ones, a factor which favoured the NP. Second, the high rate of migration of whites from rural to urban areas during the 1930s and 1940s was largely a migration of Afrikaners, this swelling the NP-leaning vote in a significant number of urban constituencies.20 The other factor which was most immediately influential was the ‘race issue’. ‘For Malan, in 1948, as for Hertzog in 1929’, the alleged “Black Peril” was a politically potent battle cry’.21 While most voters understood that a future Smuts government would follow a path of ‘ad hoc, pragmatic adjustments’ in accommodating race pressures, the NP’s steadfast stress on racial exclusivism served to re-unite nationalist support which had been divided by South Africa’s entry into the recent war. Once the war was out of the way, it undercut the electoral margin of support which had sheltered fusion from the mid-1930s. Consequently, after 19 Newell Stultz, The Nationalists in Opposition 1934–1948, Cape Town and Pretoria, Human & Rousseau, 1974. 20 Kenneth Heard, General Elections in South Africa 1943–1970, London, Oxford University Press, 1974, pp. 7–13. 21 Stultz, The Nationalists in Opposition, p. 151.

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1948, the prospect of a united white nation through the promises of compromise and conciliation was lost, and white unity, if it were to be achieved, would have to be ‘founded on principles dictated by Afrikaners’.22 Nationalist hegemony after 1948 elaborated the programme of racial dominance that previous white regimes had already entrenched. Segregationist ideology had provided a veneer for the highly unequal division of South Africa as originally mandated by the 1913 Land Act. This had prevented Africans from purchasing land outside the designated reserves, rendering the latter the only places where Africans could reside unless whites required them to be elsewhere. Their labour was needed in the urban-industrial areas, where they became the majority of the workforce, but the principle was established by the Native (Urban Areas) Act of 1923 that Africans’ presence in urban areas should be limited to only those who were absolutely wanted. Its corollary was the enforcement of influx control, requiring African males to carry passes indicating, among other things, their employment status, thereby confirming their status as ‘temporary sojourners’ – as work-seekers not permanent residents. After 1948, the nationalists proceeded to close the remaining loopholes in this system, extended its scope to include non-white subgroups previously immune from its full rigours, improved and vastly enlarged the centralized bureaucracy to better administer the system, gave the state extensive new powers to counter black resistance and massively re-enforced restrictions on black freedom. Beyond this, the nationalists also promulgated a new and elaborate ideology. Apartheid, or racial apartness, was to spawn a gospel of ‘Separate Development’ which moved beyond segregationist justifications of white racial dominance by dividing the African population into discrete ‘nationalities’ based upon ethnicity. This was employed to justify the established policy of separate and unequal, and led eventually to the NP extending the pre-existing ideal of territorial separation to the point of advocating political ‘independence’ for African ethnic groupings within their own ‘homelands’.23 Nationalist rule after 1948 was to give rise to a vast literature debating the nature of apartheid. Was it simply more racist and oppressive than its segregationist predecessor? Was apartheid rational (a spur to capitalist growth) or was it irrational (constituting a constraint on the economy)? Such questions were to provide a platform for a neo-Marxist revisionist school of historians to do vicious battle with ‘liberal’ historians about South African development patterns and political economy throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The intricacies and details of this need no repetition here, yet it is important to note that both approaches recognized that by the late 1940s, it had become apparent that segregation was in crisis. 22 Stultz, The Nationalists in Opposition, pp. 157–9. 23 For a contemporary ideological justification, see Hilgard Muller, ‘Separate Development in South Africa’, African Affairs, 62, 246, 1963, pp. 53–65.

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This had been highlighted by Jan Smuts in a famous speech he had delivered to the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) in January 1942, in which he had declared that ‘segregation has fallen on evil days’. Hitherto, Smuts had been strongly associated with policies of segregation, in which Africans would live in a rural world of chiefly governance and customary law and would never have access to the political levers of the state nor become an integral part of the modern urban social order. Now he seemed to be suggesting a dramatic shift in racial policy was afoot. There is a widespread view that Smuts’ statement was of little significance. This argues that Smuts’ government had recognized that the growth of local industries during the Second World War had been accompanied by an unprecedented rate of African urbanization. It was manifest that an increasingly urbanized African population would make forceful demands for social and political rights which would threaten the power and privileges of whites. However, the government failed to address the resulting implications. It follows from this line of thinking that official inaction paved the way for the victory of Malan’s NP in 1948. Jonathan Hyslop has put forward a valuable counter-argument, proposing instead that in the 1940s South Africa moved in significantly new political directions that cannot be sensibly understood as merely a prelude to apartheid.24 The policies of these years represented: the direct opposite of the attempt to drive the black working class out of the urban areas. Rather, they moved toward a strategy based on acceptance of black urbanization. The demands of South Africa participating in a global war unleashed a radical, and in some respects quite effective, reorganization of the South African state, economy and racial arrangements.25

It was a moment when Smuts allowed white liberal and social democratic officials to create a programme of welfarist and reformist initiatives, some of which were implemented. The turn in Smuts’ thinking (mirroring cautiously progressive trends in British colonial policy) provided space for new developments in welfarist policy that were starting to come out of the South African state. Moreover, by throwing doubt on the usefulness of dividing Africans into tribal categories (as he did), Smuts was also allowing bureaucrats to accept the reality of permanent African urbanization. During the war, the government made efforts to educate whites on the need to improve the conditions of people of colour, and there were a succession of initiatives to address the social conditions of blacks. Convictions of 24 Jonathan Hyslop, ‘“Segregation Has Fallen on Evil Days”: Smuts’ South Africa, Global War, and Transnational Politics, 1939–46’, Journal of Global History, 7, 2017, pp. 438–60. 25 Hyslop, ‘Segregation’, p. 439.

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blacks under the pass laws dropped, as black wages in industry rose dramatically. There was planning for a national health service, and in 1944, a social security committee proposed a comprehensive scheme of benefits for all South Africans, with a contributory pension scheme for African people being implemented (albeit on a racially differentiated rate). All this was premised on a recognition of the breakdown of the African reserve system and the need to address the needs of a growing African proletariat. Crucially, it had all been made possible because South Africa’s entry into the war had brought about Smuts’ break with Hertzogite segregationists. Hyslop acknowledges that Smuts was never to follow through on his dramatic words. Things changed internationally. Although he played a major role in the establishment of the UN, he was at one with his Western allies in not foreseeing the rapid break-up of the colonial world, and when it came to the crunch, he proved unable to rise to its challenge. So it was that he met with humiliation at the UN. For electoral reasons, he had introduced the ‘pegging act’, targeted at appeasing racist whites in Natal by preventing expansion of Indian property ownership in 1943. Then, in 1946, he had followed up with highly discriminatory Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Acts. Following the referral of complaints by the Natal Indian Congress to the Indian government, this led to a frontal attack upon Smuts by Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (the sister of Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India) who was the latter’s representative at the UN. Smuts’ international reputation never recovered. Hyslop cites the view of Saul Dubow that the triumph of apartheid had not been pre-ordained, and that an alternative vision of a ‘liberal or social democratic’ South Africanism was available.26 Yet, as he also goes on to say, Smuts had remained ‘a nineteenth century liberal’ who did not see the franchise as the most central issue politically. Nor indeed did ‘his more liberal and leftish colleagues’ ever come up with a formula for black enfranchisement that they could sell to whites. This judgement harks back to the widespread conviction among black historians and others that liberals were never able to overcome the racist limitations of segregation. Liberals foresaw the possibility of ‘civilizing’ the non-white (African, Coloured and Indian) racial groups and hence admitting them to the polity, yet only in the far-distant future. For the moment, whites would have to remain at the helm of affairs, and it would remain their responsibility to further the historic tasks of Western European civilization. Accordingly, any idea of political enfranchisement of non-whites was perpetually kicked into the long grass. However, so long as it remained theoretically feasible, the alarming prospect of an eventual progression to democracy and majority rule remained. It was this alarming fate that apartheid was intended to address. MacDonald 26 Hyslop was citing Saul Dubow, ‘Introduction: South Africa’s 1940s’, in Saul Dubow and Alan Jeeves (eds), South Africa’s 1940s: Worlds of Possibilities, Johannesburg, Double Storey, 2005, pp. 1–2.

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makes the point nicely. It was not racism that distinguished segregation from apartheid. Both reserved the vast bulk of land for whites; both shunted Africans into reserves or ‘homelands’; and both severely restricted the mobility of Africans, kept their wages to a minimum and reserved jobs for whites. Most crucially, both regarded government as the preserve of whites. But what apartheid did do differently was to introduce a distinct conception of race. ‘Segregation ordained blacks to be inferior to whites; apartheid cast them as indelibly different.’27 Correspondingly, it went further, by insisting that blacks had no claim to South Africa, and that they belonged elsewhere, in their own societies, because their race was different. In so doing, it answered the segregationist dilemma. Whereas segregationists like Smuts had struggled to justify the inclusion of ‘civilized’ Africans into the polity, apartheid justified African rightlessness ideologically.28 However, as MacDonald further points out, apartheid had a fundamental contradiction of its own. Although committed to disaggregating Africans as a race in favour of tribe, it was simultaneously committed to the thoroughgoing racialization of society. It thereby inadvertently promoted Africans’ commonality. Ultimately, it was to be the challenge which African nationalism posed to the apartheid state which was to compel Afrikaner exclusivism to embrace a wider white nationalism – and to grapple with the unwelcome prospect of non-­ racialism and democracy.

‘Herrenvolk democracy’ In 1970, a prominent sociologist, Pierre van den Berghe, sketched out the major characteristics of what he termed South Africa’s ‘herrenvolk democracy’. In 1948, by rallying the Afrikaner electorate, the NP had eliminated the necessity of compromise with the English, ‘gained control of the entire country, and opened the way for more extremist policies’. Given its initially precarious hold on power, it had lost no time in manipulating the parliamentary and elective machinery to render the NP practically irremovable by constitutional means. Coloureds were removed from the common roll in the Cape, ‘native representatives’ in parliament were abolished and representation was given to (largely pro-NP, German-speaking) whites in South-West Africa (Namibia). Given continued ‘loading’ of urban constituencies, it won disproportionate victories. After winning increased majorities in the 1953 and 1958 elections, it took over two-thirds of the seats in the House of Assembly with just 55 per cent of the total vote in 1961.29 27 MacDonald, Why Race Matters, p. 11. 28 MacDonald, Why Race Matters, p. 13. 29 Pierre van den Berghe, South Africa: A Study in Conflict, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1970, pp. 103–4.

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As the NP became ever more politically secure, it became ever more repressive. Especially under Hendrik Verwoerd, prime minister from 1958, ‘moderates’ were marginalized within the government as the shadowy influence of the Broederbond increased. Afrikaner nationalists were appointed to the leading positions in the military, police and civil service, along with those in public services, such as the railways and Post Office. Afrikaner control of the state-owned corporations was remorselessly extended. The diplomatic service and judiciary were infiltrated with political appointments. By the mid-1960s, nationalist control of the state was virtually complete; NP rule had leveraged significant Afrikaner upward mobility; and Afrikaner capital had begun to challenge the supremacy of ‘English capital’ during a period of industrial expansion. Meanwhile, the promotion of Afrikaans had been increased to the detriment of English in government and schools, the autonomy of English-speaking universities had been undermined, the activities of the Catholic Church and English Protestant missions had been curtailed and English newspapers operated under the perpetual threat of censorship.30 The triumph of Afrikanerdom was rendered complete by South Africa’s becoming a republic in 1961 following the NP’s win in a referendum on the issue with just 52 per cent of the vote. It was swiftly followed by Verwoerd’s withdrawal of South Africa from the Commonwealth, severing the last symbolic ties with Britain. So why did the English-speakers (and others) accept it? Well, to a certain extent they did not. Opposition to the government was tolerated within limits. Whites could register protests in meetings and speeches, and the English press could fulminate and criticize. There were brave individuals – drawn from the ranks of the churches, the English-speaking universities and civil society – who did take courageous stands against the government. A sprinkling belonged to the Communist Party, and yet others to the Liberal Party (LP), both of which had non-racial memberships. Yet outright opposition to the government faced multiple restrictions. The Communist Party was banned in 1950. The LP closed its doors completely rather than abide by the Prohibition of Political Interference Act of 1968, which banned the participation of any one ‘population group’ in the politics of another. Those brave or foolhardy enough to defy the stringent limitations imposed on political activity by the government risked the revenge of an increasingly arrogant, ruthless and brutal state. It was little wonder, concluded van den Berghe, that the English-speaking population was overwhelmingly passive. Once out of power, the UP had proved spineless. Its leadership was extraordinarily conservative, its membership more so, and only a relatively small number of its Members of Parliament (MPs) and grassroots constituents considered themselves liberals.31 When it was not actu30 Van den Berghe, South Africa, pp. 104–5. 31 Smuts retired as UP leader in 1950, and was followed by J. Strauss, who was in turn succeeded by Sir De Villiers Graaff from 1956.

The Politics of White Rule

35

ally supporting the government’s extension of its already dictatorial powers, it offered only token resistance to successive tranches of apartheid legislation. It was this strategy of pandering to the white electorate by moving to the right which prompted the breakaway in 1958 of a handful of its more liberal members to form the Progressive Party (PP), which sought to lobby whites into accepting a qualified franchise. In this it was to always face an uphill battle. The more the NP urged the necessity of the firm hand of white rule, the more it established its acceptance across the white population, residual liberal sentiment being overwhelmed by white voters’ pragmatism, fears and insecurities. The crux of the matter was that although there were still continuing tensions between English-speakers and Afrikaners, many English-speaking politicians, business leaders and voters judged that the NP governments were doing a sterling job in keeping Africans in their place. For all that the more far-sighted among them recognized that nationalist policies were radicalizing black sentiments, they were prepared to sacrifice political freedoms, tolerate Afrikanerization and even accept growing government interference into business in return for the privileges of race. Indeed, as racial tension mounted, and as black political consciousness increased, the Afrikaner-English conflict had begun to recede into the background. From that point of view, the nationalists could correctly claim that they had fostered white unity. Van den Berghe predicted that South Africa was heading towards an ‘impending and inexorable catastrophe’.32 White intransigence was leading to the very real prospect of revolution, whose likelihood would be increased with the foreseeable collapse of South Africa’s colonial cordon sanitaire (Rhodesia, Angola and Mozambique). For all that the liberation movements’ attempted insurgency since the early 1960s had proved ineffective, whites had set themselves against the course of history, and their ‘pride and prejudice’ might prove to be their undoing.33 Apocalyptic prophecy of revolution was largely discounted by those with no wish to hear. The Sharpeville massacre in 1960, when police had gunned down Africans protesting against the laws requiring them to carry passes, had led to a crisis of confidence by international investors in the government’s capacity to contain the mass-based movements which had mobilized militant campaigns of resistance in the 1950s. However, confidence had been restored by its subsequent banning of the liberation movements and the jailing of those of their leaders who had not gone into exile. During the later 1960s, high rates of investment (foreign and domestic) and the despotic labour regime combined to ensure that the economy boomed. Despite the handover of power by the colonial powers to African nationalists elsewhere, white minority rule in South Africa and the broader southern African 32 33

Van den Berghe, South Africa, p. 263. Van den Berghe, South Africa, p. 264.

36

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

subcontinent appeared too powerful to be dislodged. An influential text now spoke to the modernization of apartheid, and how a ‘pragmatic racial oligarchy’ was increasingly adjusting its racial policies in favour of ‘the smooth, frictionless, and tolerable domination’ over the black population ‘as a prerequisite for privileges of the minority’.34 South African whites were not blindly fumbling their way towards their inevitable end. They were ‘effective technocrats’ who were establishing an ‘increasingly unshakeable oligarchy’ which believed that if it offered appropriate economic concessions, South Africa’s white elite were capable of containing apartheid’s many contradictions.35 All this soon proved to be an illusion. By the mid-1970s, Portuguese colonialists in Angola and Mozambique and settler colonialists in Rhodesia were on the run. By 1980, African governments had taken power after liberation wars in all three, and South Africa was left alone to face armed struggle abroad and a crescendo of black resistance at home. Responding to both brutally, and with superior firepower, the various NP governments from the early 1970s moved through gyrations of repression and reform which maintained their ultimate control. Yet all this came at the price of declining legitimacy, mounting challenges from below, political instability, capital disinvestment by international companies and a downward-spiralling economy throughout the 1980s. Inevitably, this worked to the immense benefit of the banned ANC, whose prestige rose steadily through the decade, enabling it to impose its ideological hegemony over the internal movements of resistance which had arisen among trade unions and civic organizations. Crucially, however, the ANC’s capacity for ‘armed struggle’ was minimal, and it was never able to match the firepower deployed by the apartheid military. Nonetheless, there was increasing belief internationally that ‘time was running out’ if South Africa was to avoid a confrontation that would ‘almost certainly produce appalling bloodshed’.36

Reaction and reform Recognizing that apartheid was confronting an existential crisis, the NP government under P.W. Botha (prime minister 1978–84; president 1984–9) declared that South Africa must ‘adapt or die’. His strategy for regime survival entailed a classic combination of reaction and reform. The first entailed the imposition of successive states of emergency to clamp down on burgeoning popular opposition, this backed by the increasing militarization of the security apparatus. The 34 Heribert Adam, Modernizing Racial Domination: The Dynamics of South African Politics, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, p. 53. 35 Adam, Modernizing Racial Domination, pp. 181–2. 36 Ford Foundation, The Report of the Study Commission on U.S. Policy Toward Southern Africa/South Africa: Time Running Out, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, Foreign Policy Study Foundation Inc., 1981, p. xx.

The Politics of White Rule

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second combined the abolition or relaxation of measures which were deemed to impede growth or compromise white security.37 Authoritarian reforms were accompanied by the promulgation of a new constitution. Its key feature was the centralization of power under an executive presidency, although this was obscured by the creation of separate chambers of parliament for Indians and Coloureds alongside the white House of Assembly. Proposed to white voters in a referendum in 1982 as an exercise in ‘power-sharing’, it was approved by a two-thirds majority, the objections of the opposition Progressive Federal Party (PFP) to the exclusion of Africans being ignored by many of its supporters who felt that it was ‘a step in the right direction’.38 What they did not fully appreciate was that they were stepping out on the road to democracy. Christi van der Westhuizen has suggested that the NP’s achievement after 1948 was to bind disparate strands of nationalism together long enough for it to implement its ethnic class project. During the 1950s, the government’s policy had sought to benefit Afrikaners by promoting them within the state and parastatals and raising Afrikaner standards of living across classes and regions. Yet the particular project of the party’s elite had never been to disrupt the capital accumulation spearheaded by ‘English capital’. Rather, it had been to open it up to Afrikaner capitalists. Accordingly, while the NP government pursued economic strategies which favoured high rates of accumulation for capital overall (growth peaked between 1964 and 1972), state policy advantaged Afrikaner firms via the allocation of contracts and patronage. As a result, by the mid-1960s, the NP was in a position to forge an alliance with English-­ speakers who, despite their marginalization by the state, enjoyed the privileges accorded to them by race.39 Van der Westhuizen stresses how the high growth rate of the period afforded the NP the luxury of implementing apartheid ideology, even if it was economically irrational. However, once the economy came under increasing stress from the early 1970s, NP governments became increasingly prepared to contemplate 37 Robert Schrire, Adapt or Die: The End of White Politics in South Africa, US Ford Foundation–Foreign Policy Association, 1991. 38 Further elements had peeled away from the by now rapidly declining UP to join up with the PP, which became the Progressive Reform Party in 1975. When yet other MPs decamped from the UP in 1977, it was renamed the Progressive Federal Party. The UP then dissolved, the remainder of its MPs forming the reactionary New Republic Party. 39 The disappearance of the UP in 1977 and of its successor, the New Republic Party, in 1988 robbed many English-speaking voters of their traditional ‘middle of the road’ political home. While a minority of them chose to support the liberal Progressive Federal Party and its successor, the Democratic Party, the majority chose non-alignment and constituted a significant floating vote which the NP under Botha was eager to attract. Schrire, Adapt or Die, p. 27.

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reforms and to relax or abolish apartheid restrictions which were economically costly, and which led to divisions between verkrampte [conservative] and verligte [enlightened] elements within the party. Although the NP had established its political hegemony, Afrikanerdom was never monolithic. There were always individual dissidents, most famously Bram Fischer and Beyers Naude, who challenged the morality of apartheid. Some joined the LP, others identified with the Congress movements. Within the NP itself, there were always ideological pragmatists who advocated progress towards a conciliatory white unity rather than pursuit of an exclusive ethnic nationalism. Yet on the right of the party there was always a significant contingent of members who resisted any deviation from the Verwoerdian gospel, even if this was justified in the cause of white survival. It was from this latter element that there was to be resistance to attempts by the party leadership to implement reform. By the late 1960s, the government had begun to turn its attention to so-called ‘petty apartheid’ measures (such as those which required blacks to use separate entrances to public facilities) which served no economic purpose and could be abolished in order to deflect criticism of apartheid. Nonetheless, tentative reformist moves involved political costs, particularly insofar as they threatened the status of poorer whites (usually Afrikaners) who remained an important support base for the NP. A first breakaway to the right occurred in 1969 with the formation of the Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) by Albert Hertzog, son of the former prime minister. The new party advocated strict racial segregation and the adoption of Afrikaans as the only official language, the bulk of its membership being made up of rural and small-town working and lower-middle-class Afrikaners. For the first decade of its existence, it remained little more than an irritant to the NP. However, it made a significant impact in the general election in 1981, when although it failed to gain any seats, it took some 14 per cent of the vote, this reflecting white working-class disenchantment with the NP following the government’s recent implementation of far-reaching labour reforms.40 The Wiehahn and Riekert Commissions, which reported in 1979, had been established to consider how the government should respond to an unexpectedly rapid growth of black trade unions and a developing shortage of skilled labour, respectively.41 Worrying that these were imparting significantly increased leverage to black labour, the government sought to prevent a politicization of industrial relations. It therefore responded to the Commissions’ recommendations by legalizing African unions, albeit under restrictive conditions, and introducing 40 Brian du Toit, ‘The Far Right in Current South African Politics’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 29, 4, 1991, pp. 627–67. 41 They were, respectively, the Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation and the Commission of Inquiry into Legislation Affecting the Utilisation of Manpower.

The Politics of White Rule

39

significant relaxations on the movement of African labour. This was reform from above, intended to institutionalize labour conflict, control African unions and deflect criticism from abroad. However, for all its conservative intent, this was a strategy which undermined the historic protections accorded to white labour, and it aroused vehement opposition. The outcome was a further breakaway to the right. In March 1982, Andries Treurnicht, a minister, a former chairman of the Broederbond and the leader of the NP in the Transvaal, walked out of the party along with twenty-two other MPs to form the Conservative Party (CP). Drawing its initial support from working-class Afrikaners, the CP rapidly pushed the HNP aside. Thereafter, it steadily broadened its class base among Afrikaners so that at the 1987 general election it was able to displace the PFP as the official opposition. However, by this time, the political context was undergoing rapid change. By the mid-1960s, the NP’s ethnic class project had enjoyed success to the extent that the majority of Afrikaners had moved upwards into the middle class, while Afrikaner entrepreneurs and capitalists were advancing rapidly on their English-speaking counterparts, their overall ethnic power magnified by de facto Afrikaner control of state corporations.42 This provided for growing interpenetration of English-speaking and Afrikaner elites (inclusive of intermarriages), stronger collaboration between private and public sector corporations and the making of common cause in the relaxation of economically burdensome apartheid practices. The continuation of all these trends over the next two decades was to open the way for the NP elite, now increasingly representative of a ‘large, self-confident class of Afrikaner capitalists’, to detach its interests from those of the Afrikaner working class and, like English-speaking business, to devote their exclusive attention to the ‘bottom line’.43 Under P.W. Botha, the government came to seek more active engagement with the corporate elite. Corporate pressures for accelerated reform were matched by Botha opening the executive to appointments from both the corporate sector and the military, ‘creating a triangle of military, corporate and governmental power at the highest level of the state’.44 Reforms were introduced which assaulted some of the most sacred tenets of apartheid. The 1983 constitution heralded the formal arrival of multi-racial government (designed to weaken black solidarity); concerted attempts to promote a black middle class 42 Hermann Giliomee, ‘The Afrikaner Economic Advance’, in Heribert Adam and Hermann Giliomee, The Rise and Crisis of Economic Power, Cape Town, David Philip, 1979, pp. 145–76. 43 Dan O’Meara, Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948–1994, Johannesburg, Ravan Press; Athens, Ohio University Press, 1996, p. 316. 44 Christi van der Westhuizen, White Power and the Rise and Fall of the National Party, Cape Town, Zebra Press, 2007, p. 120.

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as a pro-capitalist buffer resulted in the lifting of long-standing restrictions on African business in urban areas; black local governments were established with the aim of defusing popular protest; the armed forces were opened to blacks and formally (although not substantively) de-racialized; Regional Services Councils were established in 1986 to deliver essential services to all (albeit excluding the homelands); and, also in 1986, the Abolition of Influx Control Act saw the repeal of the pass laws, signifying the NP’s long-delayed acceptance of black urbanization. Yet reform under Botha was always double edged, designed to divide as well as rule, and always more than matched by repression, which inflamed rather than doused popular opposition. His response to what he saw as the ‘total onslaught’ that Western civilization in South Africa was facing from the ANC and its international communist backers, was to subject the popular movements to a reign of terror by a ‘security state’ during the 1980s while inducing a siege mentality among whites. Any illusions that Botha intended to steer South Africa towards democracy were finally extinguished by his ‘Rubicon’ speech on 15 August 1985. It had been touted internationally as the moment when he would announce momentous changes, including the release of Nelson Mandela. Instead, in a finger-wagging, rambling peroration, he repeated the NP mantra that South Africa was a country of minorities, where rights had to be exercised as groups rather than as individuals and insisted that all ‘reasonable South Africans’ rejected ‘one-man-one-vote in a unitary system’, before warning the world not to ‘push us too far’.45 Already financially vulnerable because international investors had begun to pull out of South Africa because of the extended political turmoil, the regime now plunged into a major fiscal crisis. Chase Manhattan announced it would no longer roll over its loans, other banks followed suit, and South Africa was forced to default and declare a unilateral moratorium on foreign debt. The Rand plunged, capital flight accelerated, the markets closed. Whites had never been so isolated. Apartheid’s endgame had truly begun.

The endgame Van der Westhuizen proffers the intriguing suggestion that Botha resigned as party leader on 2 February 1989 in order to consolidate his position as executive state president, free himself of accountability to a weakened parliament, strengthen his claim to representing ‘all South Africans’ rather than just Afrikaners and take South Africa in a fascist-style corporatist direction. However, by splitting the party leadership from the state presidency, Botha robbed himself of his power base, and his ambitions were to be snuffed out by an alliance of verligte reformers, capitalists and the military turning against him. The NP rejected his favoured candidate (Finance Minister Barend du Plessis) for the party lead45

Van der Westhuizen, White Power, pp. 135–9.

The Politics of White Rule

41

ership in favour of F.W. de Klerk; and, no longer needing to be molly-coddled, the now-powerful class of Afrikaner capitalists proceeded to embrace neo-­ liberal laissez-faire capitalism and shared the general ambition of South African capitalists for re-incorporation into the global economy. Furthermore, by this time, some (although not all) securocrats and top state officials were urging the necessity of negotiations with the ANC. It was a shift assisted by Botha, who had recently had a stroke, being bundled out of the state presidency in 1989. Whether a fascist option was really a possibility remains in dispute.46 However, what is indisputable is van der Westhuizen’s further argument that while the coalition that underpinned de Klerk’s rise to the presidency backed negotiations with the ANC, it stopped far short of advocating majority rule. Instead, it joined with the NP in pursuing the idea of democracy as ‘power-sharing’, a strategy which was reminiscent of the enthusiasm for ‘racial partnership’ among white settlers during the last days of colonial rule in Kenya and Rhodesia. Hence it was that the NP proceeded to fight the last race-based election in September 1989 on a platform which explicitly rejected a common voters’ roll. It argued instead that a new constitutional dispensation should ensure the protection of groups; parliamentary representation should be by race; and a veto mechanism should be put in place to ensure that one racial group was not able to dominate another. All this was backed up by strident assurances that state power would be used to prevent the ANC unleashing a bloodbath in the event of a political transition. The election saw the NP returned with its usual solid majority. However, this was its worst result for thirty years. To the right, it had lost significant support to the CP, which won 39 seats (31.5 per cent of the vote) and solidified its role as the official opposition. To the left, it lost votes to the Democratic Party (DP, the successor to the PFP), which won 33 seats (with 20 per cent). Yet what was most telling was that in an election in which the white monopoly of political power was at stake, it drew more of its support (50 per cent) from English-speaking voters than it did from Afrikaners (46 per cent).47 The shift in the NP’s support base was confirmed by de Klerk. In his game-changing address to parliament on 2 February 1990 (announcing the release of Mandela and the unbanning of the liberation movements), he pronounced the election result as the white electorate backing the NP to enter negotiations with ‘representatives of the entire population’. This was to be vehemently disputed by the CP, which proceeded to oppose the opening of negotiations and boycotted the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa), the multi-party forum which met for the first time in December 1991. In so doing, it 46 Dan O’Meara recognizes that de Klerk’s freedom of movement prior to his unbanning of the ANC was severely limited by the power of the securocrats yet proceeds to analyse how de Klerk managed to clip their wings and ensure that they remained under civilian control. See his Forty Lost Years, pp. 402–4. 47 Van der Westhuizen, White Power, pp. 175–6.

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was to win three by-elections. However, in March 1992, de Klerk was to call its bluff by calling a whites-only referendum on whether the government should continue on its course. This delivered him a resounding 68.7 per cent ‘Yes’ vote (effectively, on the basis of the NP and DP votes being combined together).48 There is no need to add to the numerous accounts of how, during the highly contested and violent period of negotiations that followed, the government was to be outwitted by the ANC.49 Suffice to say that within the space of just over two years, the NP government acceded to a transitional interim constitution which was recognizably liberal-democratic and was premised upon the entrenchment of human equality and individual rights. To get to that point, the ANC had made major concessions. Most notably, it had agreed to major limitations upon its future constitution-making powers in exchange for the government relinquishing power. But eighty-four years after the formation of the Union, apartheid and white supremacy were now about to make way for a democracy which would transform a racially defined white minority into citizens of a non-racial state.

48 Van der Westhuizen, White Power, pp. 238–9. 49 Steven Friedman and Doreen Atkinson (eds), The Small Miracle: South Africa’s Negotiated Settlement, South African Review 7, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1994.

2 Putting the Liberal into Democracy This chapter seeks to address a simple question, yet one which is of fundamental importance for understanding the location of whites in South African democracy. How is it that the 1994 constitution came to embody an undeniably liberal-­ democratic character when liberal thought and its manifestations in party form had failed to attract widespread support before this time? Any attempt to answer this must first grapple with the problem that, historically, liberalism in South Africa had been regarded as being ‘white’.

The whiteness of liberalism before 1994 Michael Cardo, a DA MP, has argued that despite having always been the project of ‘an embattled political minority’ occupying the middle ground of politics, liberalism is ‘the oldest and most enduring political tradition’ in South Africa. He does not dispute that, in the words of a historian, it was ‘initially an exotic plant’.1 Indeed, he acknowledges that its principles and institutions, such as parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, a free press, freedom of speech and freedom of association were ‘transplanted’ from Britain. Nonetheless, these provided the tools for ending apartheid and building an open and democratic society.2 Cardo is less sure-footed when it comes to considering the right to vote as a defining aspect of South African liberalism, for the very good reason that although the Cape Colony’s constitution of 1853 entrenched a non-racial franchise, this came with educational and economic qualifications.3 Although, just 1

2 3

Rodney Davenport, ‘The Cape Liberal Tradition to 1910’, in Jeffrey Butler, Richard Elphick and David Welsh (eds), Democratic Liberalism in South Africa: Its History and Prospect, Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press; Cape Town and Johannesburg, David Philip, 1987, pp. 21–34. Michael Cardo, ‘The Liberal Tradition in South Africa: Past and Present’, Helen Suzman Foundation, 2010? . Cardo, ‘The Liberal Tradition’.

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over a century later, the LP was to commit to the ideal of the universal franchise, it was liberalism’s ambivalence towards the idea of votes for all regardless of race which was to constitute the major constraint upon its viability as a political tradition before 1994. In short, liberalism was always impaled upon the horns of a dilemma dictated by its colonial setting. Should it put commitment to the principle of human equality out in the political marketplace regardless of the immediate cost among a white electorate? Or should it put pragmatism before principle in a bid to convert whites to progress towards non-racialism through the ballot box?4 It is this ambivalence regarding citizenship for all that has opened liberalism to the charge that it was inherently constrained by the white power structure. One such critique was penned in the early 1980s by Sam Nolutshungu. While liberalism introduced the idea of constitutional government to South Africa, it simultaneously recognized the dangers that democracy presented to property. Because property ownership was overwhelmingly restricted to whites, it was difficult to disconnect the liberal idea from ‘possessive individualism’.5 In a similar vein, Pallo Jordan, one of the ANC’s leading intellectuals, has argued that liberals were thoroughly embedded in colonial settler society. Accordingly, they ensured that the franchise and attendant political rights were restricted to the propertied classes, who were largely white. Liberalism was never capable of moving beyond these constraints.6 These competing perspectives take us back to the important work of C.B. Macpherson, who highlighted a foundational duality in liberalism: ‘Liberal’ can mean freedom of the stronger to do down the weaker by following market rules; or it can mean equal effective freedom of all to use and develop their capacities. The latter freedom is inconsistent with the former.7

While liberalism was constructed around notions of individual rights, the implication of equality that this embodied was countered by crucial aspects of economic freedom: the right to own property, to hire labour and make profits. Liberalism hence came to assume a very definite class component linked to the interests of the bourgeoisie. Yet, like all ideologies, liberalism was historically 4 5 6 7

For a valuable discussion of this dilemma, see Thiven Reddy, South Africa, Settler Colonialism and the Failures of Liberal Democracy, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2015. Sam C. Nolutshungu, Changing South Africa: Political Considerations, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1982, pp. 15–17. Pallo Jordan, ‘There Is No Liberal Tradition in South Africa’, Amandla! 2013 . C.B. Macpherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, New York, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 1.

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contingent, changing with the times. Emerging from the era of the English Civil War, a second strand of liberalism emerged which placed stress on social justice, freedom from want and a more expansive conception of equality. If we accept this duality in liberalism, between its (bourgeois) class and its (human rights-based) non-class elements, it is not difficult to appreciate the enormously hostile environment that apartheid offered to liberalism.

Liberalism under Apartheid Although the study of liberalism’s early days is fascinating,8 the story of how it was to evolve under apartheid must begin with its uneasy attempts to adjust to the radicalization of African nationalism which followed the massive wartime expansion of the African working class in urban areas. The story of how and why the ANC, then a small, politically cautious organization dominated by professionals, was to be captured by the ANCYL and directed onto a path of radical mass action needs little elaboration here.9 Formed in 1944 by an outstanding generation of African leaders and intellectuals, inclusive of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Anton Lembede, members of the ANCYL were impatient with their elders’ temporizing with a Smuts government which had refused to concede that the promise of equality of peoples, proclaimed by the Allies in the Atlantic Charter of 1941 as their war aims, applied at home. Yet worse was to come, with the defeat of the Smuts government in the 1948 election and the arrival in power of an NP government dedicated to rigid racial separation and white domination. The ANCYL’s pressure upon the ANC to move towards extra-parliamentary protest came at a time when there was steady progress towards joint action with the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), the African People’s Organisation (APO – mainly representative of Coloureds) and the CPSA in opposition to segregation. Following the NP’s triumph in 1948, the political winds blew strongly behind the ANCYL, whose campaigning culminated in the defeat of the cautiously conservative Alfred Xuma for the presidency of the ANC in December 1949. This came after he had declined to endorse the League’s Programme of Action, which urged a campaign of boycotts, civil disobedience and non-­cooperation. 8

9

For instance, Stanley Trapido, ‘“The Friends of the Natives”: Merchants, Peasants and The Political and Ideological Structure of Liberalism in the Cape, 1854–1910’, in Shula Marks and Anthony Atmore (eds), Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa, London, Longman, 1980, pp. 247–74; Paul Rich, White Power and the Liberal Conscience: Racial Segregation and South African Liberalism, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1984. Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 2017, remains a classic account.

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The new government had rapidly enacted a raft of racially discriminatory legislation and embarked upon its troubled but ultimately successful campaign to disenfranchise Coloured voters. Along the way, it had also passed the Suppression of Communism Act of 1953, whose definition of communism was so extensive that it could be used to clamp down on virtually any activity working for racial equality. The ANC’s response had been to launch the Defiance Campaign of 1952. Although closed down by government repression, this strengthened collaboration between the ANC and SAIC, led to the formation of the Congress Alliance and wedded Congress to increasingly militant, extra-parliamentary opposition. This was only to be finally quelled by the government’s banning of the ANC and the breakaway PAC after Sharpeville in 1960. Liberals were to be caught between African nationalism and Afrikaner nationalism.10 After the war, native representatives and the IRR had sought to mediate between the UP government and the ANC, but this had come to grief over the latter’s advocacy of the boycott of the institutions of representation established in 1936. Nor were liberals any more successful in lobbying the UP to shift in a progressive direction, despite the faith they placed in Smuts’ anointed successor, Jan Hofmeyr, who shared their desire to shield black moderates from radicalizing influences. His death, just seven months after the NP’s election victory, compounded the liberals’ gloom. It confirmed the convictions of those who gave up on the UP as a vehicle of change after its election defeat in 1953 and formed the LP. At its first national conference in July, the new party endorsed a qualified non-racial franchise and committed to using ‘only democratic and constitutional means of opposition’.11 David Everatt has explored how liberals differed among themselves in the 1950s. Some of the most left-inclined joined the South African Congress of Democrats (SACOD) when it was formed in 1952 as the white wing of the Congress Alliance. However, many liberals regarded SACOD as a communist front, a view they shared with politically moderate and Africanist sentiment within the ANC. Reluctance to cooperate with perceived communists was to bedevil relationships with the Congress Alliance. Although there was always substantial support within the LP for closer cooperation with the Congress movement, there was simultaneously opposition based on fears that participation in extra-­ parliamentary struggle would erode the party’s commitment to constitutional means of opposition. These differences were exacerbated by controversy over whether the party should participate in the Congress of the People in 1955. Its eventual decision 10 11

For major studies, see Janet Robertson, Liberalism in South Africa, 1948–63, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971; and Randolph Vigne, Liberals against Apartheid: A History of the Liberal Party of South Africa, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997. David Everatt, The Origins of Non-Racialism: White Opposition to Apartheid in the 1950s, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, p. 146.

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not to do so was to open it to charges that it was opposed to black demands for full equality. However, the irony was that while the Charter committed the Congress movement to a non-racial South Africa, the Alliance itself was a multi-racial composite from which the PAC was to break away in 1959, citing the need to assert African leadership. Its virulent anti-communism was something it shared with stridently anti-communist elements of the LP. The LP travelled a long way after 1953. At its 1954 conference, progressives secured passage of a motion which committed it to universal franchise, even though, to appease conservatives, it was accepted that this might have to be brought about in stages.12 Furthermore, by the end of the decade, although rejecting the Freedom Charter’s ‘socialist provisions’, the LP had declared it a ‘truly democratic’ document. Additionally, given the government’s closing down of means of protest, it had come to accept strikes and boycotts as legitimate. Correspondingly, its shifting position provided a basis for closer relations with the Congress movement. However, when, in 1959, this culminated in working together with the ANC to organize the first overseas boycott of South African goods, it proved too much for the LP’s more conservative members, who then joined the PP, which had recently split from the UP.13 The more conservative stream argued that the LP’s principal task remained that of persuading white voters of the need for change, and participation in extra-parliamentary action risked crossing over into revolution. The more progressive stream, headed by the leadership of the party around Alan Paton and Peter Brown, argued that while all liberals wanted to be governed constitutionally, the government had closed down the space for constitutional opposition. Breaking the law to uphold fundamental liberal principles was therefore inevitable, although these same principles dictated that the party should not stray from non-violent means of resistance.14 As a result, when the party was faced in 1968 with the legal demand that it forgo its commitment to non-racialism, it had no option but to dissolve. The demise of the LP left the PP as the only vehicle for those who claimed the title of liberals. Divisions between liberals and conservatives within the UP had come to a head at its congress in August 1959. The conservatives had argued 12 Everatt, The Origins of Non-Racialism, p. 161. 13 Everatt, The Origins of Non-Racialism, p. 200. 14 After the banning of the liberation movements, a small number of members of the LP opted to resort to sabotage, albeit eschewing violence against people. Their mission was to collapse confidence in the economy and thereby turn whites against the government. However, as their chief historian was to conclude, if they were liberals at all, it was only ‘by a slender thread’. See Magnus Gunther, ‘The National Committee of Liberation/Armed Resistance Movement’, in South African Democracy Education Trust, The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 1 (1960–1970), pp. 209–55 (citation p. 253).

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that the UP should arrest its electoral decline by outbidding the NP to its right. The liberals responded that African nationalism should be met by developing a black middle class. The resulting clash led to twelve MPs and other Liberal dissidents walking out of the UP and forming the ‘Progs’ on 13–14 November 1959. Backed by the Anglo-American magnate Harry Oppenheimer, the party’s founding principles included the protection of fundamental rights irrespective of race, the rule of law and the promotion of free enterprise. A year later, at its second congress, the party committed to a Bill of Rights and a non-racial qualified (via educational, income and property criteria) franchise.15 Over the decades that followed, the Progressive tradition took a variety of party forms. Until 1974, the PP remained very small, drawing support largely from well-off whites. Following the Sharpeville crisis, when it denounced the banning of political organizations, it won only 8.6 per cent of the vote in the 1961 election, which saw the return of the redoubtable Helen Suzman as its only MP.16 She was to remain its sole representative in parliament until the election of 1974, when the party made a breakthrough by winning six seats, and a seventh in a by-election the following year. The strike waves of the early 1970s presented a crisis not only for the government but also for the UP, whose electoral base had been steadily eroding. In February 1975, a ‘reform’ wing was turfed out of the party and reconstituted itself as the Reform Party, before merging with the PP to form the Progressive Reform Party (PRP). Then, confronted by Soweto, the UP’s leader, Sir De Villiers Graaff, called for a united opposition. After two months of wrangling between the UP and PRP, the former fragmented, its most right-wing MPs forming the South African Party, while the majority formed the New Republic Party. This left just six UP MPs to merge with the PRP, which now became the Progressive Federal Party (PFP). This proceeded to win seventeen seats and become the official opposition in the snap 1977 election. It was to remain the official opposition until the election of 1987, when it was ousted from that role by the CP, which had broken away from the NP to the right in 1982. After internal ructions within the PFP, which led to rebel MPs forming a New Democratic Movement, it came together again to form the DP in 1989.17 Cardo is full of praise for the LP for having championed the principles that would constitute the foundations of a non-racial, democratic, South Africa. When faced in 1968 with having to abandon non-racialism to survive, it opted for principle and dissolved. In contrast, the Progressive tradition was to accept See South African Institute of Race Relations, A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, Johannesburg, South African Institute of Race Relations, 1960, pp. 12–14. 16 Suzman had first been elected as MP for Houghton in the election of 1953. 17 Brian Hackland, ‘The Economic and Political Context of the Growth of the Progressive Federal Party in South Africa, 1959–1978’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 7, 1, 1980, pp. 1–16. 15

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the necessity of making pragmatic compromises. As a result, it achieved what the LP did not, ‘bequeathing an enduring and sustainable institutional legacy for liberalism’ which, in the shape of the DA, continues to exist today.

The Progressive tradition Cardo’s rosy view is challenged by those who, from the 1970s onward, characterized the Progressive tradition as representing ‘liberal monopoly capitalism’ during an era when South African capitalism was confronting a major crisis. It was most carefully presented by David Shandler who, in an outstanding MA thesis, argued that although the PFP shared a commitment to capitalist accumulation with the white dominating classes, it differed significantly in its commitment to an inclusive non-racial democracy.18 Shandler used Macpherson’s distinction between the class and non-class elements of liberalism to understand how the PFP responded to the crisis of the state and capitalism in the 1970s and 1980s. He depicted its specific class character as that of a bourgeois party which advocated the interests of capital. This was illustrated by its firm belief in the modernization thesis, which depicted industrialization as undermining the irrationality of apartheid economics, and more specifically, by its determined opposition to economic sanctions. Yet this did not make the PFP an unambiguous champion of capitalist interests. For a start, business largely swung behind the NP rather than the PFP as the government embarked upon top-down economic reform from the late 1970s. In contrast, the PFP’s advocacy of rights for black South Africans meant that it was often at odds with the business community. The PFP wanted to present itself to whites as capable of promoting dialogue between Afrikaner and African nationalisms. From the early 1970s, it made increasing efforts to demonstrate its capacity to garner moderate black support by conducting high-profile meetings with major leaders on the African continent. Although cordial, these revealed major differences over sanctions. At home, as well as backing calls by business leaders for urban upgrading and extension of trade union rights, it initiated contacts with the leaders of the homelands, establishing a particularly close relationship with KwaZulu’s leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who was eager to demonstrate his anti-apartheid credentials by refusing to move his territory towards ‘independence’. However, the changing national context demanded that it adopt a more systematic approach to reform which, while promising movement towards democracy, simultaneously sought to avert racial polarization and political extremism. Responding to proposals by Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, who was to become leader in 1979, the PFP adopted a framework of ‘consociational democracy’ 18

David Shandler, ‘Structural Crisis and Liberalism: A History of the Progressive Federal Party, 1981–1989’, MA thesis, Economic History, University of Cape Town, 1991.

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whose essence was to contain the threat posed by black majority rule through provisions for federal decentralization and vetoes for political minorities. At its 1978 congress, it committed to universal franchise, the calling of a national convention, a common citizenship and the abolition of racial discrimination. However, this went too far ahead of its support base, which proceeded to ignore the party’s recommendation of a ‘No’ vote in the 1983 referendum on the proposed tri-cameral constitution, accepting the view of the business community that it was a ‘step in the right direction’. During the 1980s, the PFP was confronted by a dilemma over whether to support or oppose the government’s top-down reform initiatives, which featured cautious de-racialization of the economy. Its difficulties were increased by its Reform Party elements, who were inclined to support such reforms, whereas more liberal elements were hostile to any cooperation with the government. At the same time, the NP was beginning to close the gap between itself and the PFP. Yet what continued to differentiate them was the PFP’s continuing adherence to the non-class components of its discourse, most notably its strident criticisms of the successive states of emergency of the 1980s and the government’s abuses of individual liberties and civil rights. For all the PFP’s protests about removals of blacks from white areas and its robust condemnation of security force atrocities, the radicalization of black protest in the 1980s meant that it became increasingly less able to present itself as a party of the middle ground. Opposition to the government’s constitutional reforms had led to the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF). Working in effect as the internal wing of the ANC, the UDF embarked on rendering the urban areas ungovernable by organizing rent boycotts, strikes and stayaways, many of which resulted in extensive violence. Although by late 1985 the PFP had re-established cordial relations with the ANC via a clandestine meeting in Lusaka, its participation in what black radicals dismissed as apartheid structures and its continuing opposition to disinvestment and sanctions undermined its ability to bridge the gap between opposing extremes. In any case, for all that the party had opened up its membership to blacks in 1985, few joined, and de facto it remained a party of whites. It was van Zyl Slabbert’s conviction that the PFP was becoming irrelevant that prompted his shock resignation from parliament and as leader of the party in early 1986 on the grounds that extra-parliamentary activity had now become a more effective way to bring about political change.19 Subsequently, the seizure of the reform initiative by de Klerk was to confirm the marginality of the PRP at the very moment when the liberal principles it advocated were to provide the foundations for a democratic South Africa.

19 He proceeded to establish the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa.

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Ironic victory: the triumph of liberal ideas ‘It is ironic’, claimed David Welsh in introducing a major collection debating liberalism published in 1998, ‘that political organizations like the National Party and ANC, neither of whom could be described as liberal, could agree on an essentially liberal form of state’. Over the decades, liberalism had won few battles, yet it could claim, ‘in a significant sense’, to have won the war. The final constitution was far from being a perfect document. Indeed, it retained much of the Westminster model’s proclivity for ‘winner-takes-all’ and left open the prospects for democracy in South Africa’s deeply divided society. Nonetheless, enshrining human rights and the rule of law, it was founded upon liberal principles.20 An unlikely pairing of Pallo Jordan of the ANC and Tony Leon, formerly leader of the DA, were both to lend Welsh their support. According to Jordan, both white and black South Africans had distrusted liberalism, albeit for diametrically opposite reasons. Nonetheless, as a result of dialogue, they found each other in negotiations and arrived at ‘the common ground of the institutions of liberalism’.21 More pugnacious, Leon was less convinced that there was any genuine meeting of minds. Neither the NP nor the ANC had any political philosophy grounded in democratic beliefs. Rather, both were ‘instrumentalists’ who saw democracy as a device for retaining, or attaining, power. In other words, with the DP essentially cast in the role of ‘interested bystander’, the liberal-democratic outcome came about as a result of a ‘power play’ in which NP bargaining ineptness was brutally exposed by the ANC.22 Jordan’s and Leon’s views were broadly consonant with those of contemporary political theorists who argued that, in the wake of the Cold War, transitions to democracy were most likely to succeed if they were based upon top-down ‘pacting’ between opposing elites, whereby ‘soft-liners’ marginalized ‘hard-­liners’, rather than ‘bottom-up’ reform or revolution.23 If, therefore, we accept the apparent consensus that liberals were largely marginal to the negotiations, then we need to ask why. To provide the answer, we need to look at the principal political actors involved. In brutally summary terms, these were the NP, the ANC and the Others. The most important of the last were the far right and Buthelezi’s Inkatha 20 David Welsh, ‘Introduction: The Liberal Inheritance’, in R.W. Johnson and David Welsh (eds), Ironic Victory: Liberalism in Post-liberation South Africa, Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 1–22. 21 Jordan, ‘There Is No Liberal Tradition’. 22 Tony Leon, On the Contrary: Leading the Opposition in a Democratic South Africa, Johannesburg and Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2008, citations from pp. 191 and 189. 23 Guillermo O’Donnell, Laurence Whitehead and Philippe Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, Volumes I–IV, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.

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movement (because they were potentially spoilers of any deal) and the DP, which, although largely on the sidelines of events, was able to make occasional important interventions. It is only the DP’s involvements which will be considered below, as although the far right and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) made a significant impact upon the negotiations, they did so only in the negative sense that their threats had to be countered by late concessions by the ANC to enable the 1994 elections to proceed without violence.24 In contrast, the DP made a meaningful if marginal contribution to the forging of a democratic constitution. The National Party: Leon is correct in regarding the NP’s approach to democracy as ‘instrumentalist’. During its forty years in power, it had embarked upon a systematic assault upon the rule of law and human rights, deepened the foundations of racial domination and ruled by fear and force. Its belated liberalizing reforms were motivated not by any sense of principle but by the will to survive. By the late 1980s, the intellectual foundations of apartheid had long been exposed as threadbare. Hence when de Klerk made his speech of 2 February 1990, in which he promised a constitutional settlement to be negotiated with leaders of all other parties, including those that he now unbanned, he was stealing the DP’s clothing. Leon cites van Zyl Slabbert as observing that de Klerk’s speech was a ‘sell-out of everything the NP had held near and dear since 1948’.25 It may have been courageous, yet in no way was it a Damascene conversion to democracy; rather, it was one of ‘calibrated rationality’ designed to ‘surrender power without losing it’.26 Furthermore, by positioning the NP as the party of reform, de Klerk was seeking to marginalize the DP as the voice of change. The NP’s constitutional proposals, published in early 1991, put forward an outlandish framework for ‘power-sharing’ whose essence was to contain the threat of universal franchise by structures designed to accommodate ‘cultural differences’. Founded on the pillars of a constitutional state and a ‘participatory democracy’, power would be divided between autonomous ‘tiers of government’ 24 The far right, which was deeply divided by ideological and strategic differences, was only to be enticed to participate in the 1994 election (as the Freedom Front) by the ANC agreeing to the insertion of a principle into the constitution which would allow for Afrikaner self-determination in the form of a volkstaat if there was proven to be support for it. Similarly, Inkatha’s threat of secession (backed by massive violence between its supporters and those of the UDF/ANC in Natal) was headed off only by promises of stronger powers than had already been agreed for provincial governments in February 1994, although this then had to be backed up by strong twists to Buthelezi’s arm, as he held out for further concessions till virtually the last minute before the election. See Doreen Atkinson, ‘Brokering a Miracle? The Multi-Party Negotiation Forum’, in Steven Friedman and Doreen Atkinson (eds), The Small Miracle: South Africa’s Negotiated Settlement, South African Review 7, Braamfontein, Ravan Press, 1994, pp. 13–43. 25 Leon, On the Contrary, p. 181. 26 Leon, On the Contrary, p. 197.

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at central, regional and local levels. At a central level, a proportionately elected lower house would be matched by a disproportionately elected upper house representative of regions, key legislation requiring ‘weighted majorities’ to protect minorities. Meanwhile, the executive would be vested in a collective presidency which would appoint a multi-party cabinet ‘by consensus’, its chairpersonship rotating between the leaders of the three largest parties in the lower house. The far right was correct to argue that the proposals would have come as a shock to the NP’s grassroots supporters. Having given no hint of any intent to talk to the ANC/SACP in its recent 1989 election campaign, it lacked the mandate to do so now. Its proposals provided totally inadequate protection to the white minority and placed naïve faith in the idea of a constitutional state when African experience had demonstrated that post-colonial constitutions were little more than useless pieces of paper.27 The period between de Klerk’s February 1990 speech and the launch of Codesa, which met from December 1991 until May 1992, was a period of talks about talks in which the main protagonists – the ANC and the government – gradually found their way to an agreement about how to conduct negotiations. It was a period of distrust and perilous compromises conducted among recurring waves of violence. Yet, at last, an agreement was reached whereby a forum for negotiation (Codesa) would be convened, involving nineteen delegations from political parties and homeland governments, from which only groupings on the far right and the far left chose to exclude themselves. Ultimately, it proved unable to deliver a negotiated settlement and was to collapse. Nonetheless, Codesa yielded a declaration committing the participants to an undivided South Africa, universal suffrage in a multiparty democracy, separation of powers and a Bill of Rights, all principles basic to a liberal democracy. Although it failed because both the ANC and NP had overestimated their own strength and underrated that of their opponents, Codesa had confirmed not only that the transitional game had begun but that it was now unstoppable.28 Or was it? The far right thought it was, and on 19 February 1992, the CP won a by-election in Potchefstroom on a platform of opposing the negotiations. The NP’s third by-election defeat in a row since the previous election, the Potchefstroom result threatened de Klerk’s majority in parliament. His response was immediate and masterful. The next day, he announced to parliament that a referendum among white voters would be held on 17 March to give the government a mandate to continue with the negotiations that would lead to a democratic constitution. It put the right wing completely on the back foot, as in this, the NP could rely upon the grudging support of not only the DP in 27

Fanie Jacobs, ‘Constitutional Proposals of the National Party – A Critical Analysis’, Monitor: The Journal of the Human Rights Trust, October 1991, pp. 81–3. Jacobs was a former law professor at Potchefstroom University and a Conservative Party MP. 28 Ralph Lawrence, ‘Introduction: From Soweto to Codesa’, in Friedman and Atkinson (eds), The Small Miracle.

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parliament, but also the ANC outside it. The result, a 70 per cent ‘Yes’ vote, was a triumph, and as Leon argues, emboldened de Klerk to think that he could out-negotiate the ANC and run them very close in an all-race election. In this, of course, he was proven to be very wrong. Nonetheless, he had put beyond all doubt the fact that by this stage the large majority of whites were supportive of a transition to democracy. Detailed accounts of the negotiations which followed the resumption of negotiations in the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum (MPNF) in March 1993 have been provided elsewhere.29 The final outcome was agreement around the interim constitution under which South Africa was to be governed until it was superseded by a final constitution. Its key features included an entrenched Bill of Rights against which legislation and government action could be tested by a constitutional court. Although the ANC had conceded ground on key issues, it was the NP which had given away the most. Most crucially, whereas historically the NP had insisted that rights belonged to groups, it ultimately agreed to a Bill of Rights based on individual rights. And whereas it had insisted that such a Bill should be passed by parliament before an election, it eventually agreed that a final constitution should be passed by a constituent assembly composed of both houses of parliament after a democratically conducted general election. Furthermore, at Codesa it had insisted that a supermajority of 75 per cent of members of a constituent assembly would be needed to endorse a final constitution. This would effectively have given it a veto. Now, however, it conceded to one of 70 per cent. To be sure, the NP gained assurance that the first democratic government would be a coalition, composed proportionately from the three best-performing parties in an election. Yet even in this regard it was to be outflanked. Its triumph in securing a deputy presidency for de Klerk was negated by the ANC’s insistence on one for itself (as the predicted majority party), while cabinet decisions would be made by majority vote and not, as the NP had hoped, by consensus. Standard accounts correctly itemize the reasons for the NP being mauled so badly and how this came to happen. They run from the government’s steady loss of control over the country as popular violence and protest mounted, through its uncertain hold over the security forces and the fragmentation of its traditional support base, to the minutiae of how ANC negotiators outwitted their counterparts. Yet underestimated is the simple fact that, once it had agreed to enter negotiations, its clinging to apartheid-style group rights as the basis for a constitution was never viable as a basis for liberal democracy. It was no great surprise that when NP politicians trained in the law engaged with their counterparts from the ANC, they were to find agreement around internationally established precepts of law and human rights.30 29 Steven Friedman (ed.), The Long Journey: South Africa’s Quest for a Negotiated Settlement, Braamfontein, Ravan Press, 1993; Friedman and Atkinson, The Small Miracle. 30 Interview, Sheila Camerer, Deputy Minister of Justice in the NP government, 6 December 2019.

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The ANC: If the NP’s problem was that it was bereft of ideas, that of the ANC was that it was assailed by too many! Heidi Brooks has provided a fascinating account of the ANC’s intellectual history and how it sought to wed its commitment to participatory democracy to representative institutions. Most relevant to present concerns is how during the late 1980s it embarked upon a period of codifying its ideas, of blending ideas of people’s power with those of constitutionalism. This work was to be carried out by a Constitution Committee of the ANC’s Department of Legal and Constitutional Affairs, established in January 1986 in recognition of the shifting international terrain and pressure to think about a post-apartheid reality. Whereas the NP government’s constant denial that it was contemplating negotiations at this time meant that it was intellectually unprepared for them when they arrived, the ANC already had most of its ideas in the bank.31 The popular struggles against apartheid in the 1980s gave rise to the notion of ‘people’s power’. However, there was no uniform conception of what this meant, and it was subject to a multiplicity of ideological and intellectual currents, producing a complex and nuanced discourse. Nonetheless, for all their diversity, these ultimately congregated around a model of democracy that was largely unitary in form. Hence, although the UDF placed greater emphasis upon the ‘democratic’ in the idea of the ‘national democratic revolution’ which the ANC envisaged as an outcome of liberation, its own emphasis on the subordination of the individual’s will to the collective implied little respect for political tolerance. Discourses of hegemony, unity, vanguardism and discipline therefore all contributed to the notion of democracy as something bounded: ‘A participatory process that was circumscribed by allegiance to the ANC’ and its commitment to ‘vanguard leadership’, which was rooted in its Marxism–Leninism.32 The formation by the ANC of its Constitution Committee indicated its awareness of the need not only to codify its own ideas about democracy but also to pre-empt constitutional initiatives of the government and address concerns emerging from South African business and the international community about the type of state that would replace apartheid. The principles it put forward suggest a resurfacing of liberal ideas from the movement’s earlier history33 and the introduction of new ones, as well as a desire to retain in principle certain radical democratic features embedded in the notion of ‘people’s power’. Furthermore, its work was overlaid with both the acceptance of recent international human Heidi Brooks, The African National Congress and Participatory Democracy: From People’s Power to Public Policy, Johannesburg, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 32 Brooks, The African Nationalist Congress, pp. 63–107. 33 On this, see notably Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, who traces how South Africa’s black lawyers argued for a constitutionalism that respected individual rights and freedoms and developed the concept of a Bill of Rights. See his The Land is Ours: Black Lawyers and the Birth of Constitutionalism in South Africa, Penguin, 2018. 31

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rights conventions and the influence of other constitutional models, including those countries which had not influenced the ANC historically. Neither the ANC nor the UDF had provided for competing political alternatives within their popular discourse, and such liberal precepts were often rejected outright. This was of concern to some leading figures within the ANC, notably those who had had experience of post-colonial Africa. One was Pallo Jordan, who in 1985 had spoken out against what he depicted as the widely held ‘misconception’ within the liberation movement that radical social transformation would only be possible under one-party rule. More crucially, in January 1986 ANC President Oliver Tambo had issued a statement which observed that even within a non-racial South Africa, it was likely that there would be divisions among a ‘united people’ that would lead to the formation of different political parties, even though he had implied that they should accept the Freedom Charter and its objectives. This cleared the way for the Constitution Committee to come up with proposals that accepted the existence of multiple parties so long as they did not operate on the basis of race or ethnicity, even though leading up to the negotiation process there remained divisions of interpretation within the ANC around whether parties should be allowed to exist if they did not accept the principles of the Freedom Charter (which itself did not guarantee the rights of individuals to form political parties). Nonetheless, the important point is that when the ANC approached the negotiation process, it did so from a commitment to multi-party democracy and political pluralism. This transition away from a unitary conception of democracy to a pluralistic one was accompanied by movement towards guarantees of freedoms of speech and association, and importantly, the idea of a Bill of Rights. Prior to the mid1980s, argues Brooks, the ANC had largely dismissed individual rights as a feature of bourgeois democracy, and there was strong aversion towards a Bill of Rights, this having become associated with the liberal tradition and protection of minority privilege. However, under the particular influence of Albie Sachs (later to become one of the first jurists appointed to sit on the constitutional court), there was to be a rethink about rights among ‘at least some’ within the ANC. Sachs had noted that the demand for a Bill of Rights had largely emanated from the ranks of the oppressors, resulting in its being seen within the movement as a brake upon the democratic advance. Yet rather than such a Bill being viewed as imposing limitations upon a future government, he believed it should come to be regarded as an instrument of liberation. This conception was to become increasingly influential, and by 1992 the ANC had committed to a Bill of Rights that would include a wide range of rights and freedoms. Although there were to be considerable reservations about how a Bill of Rights would relate to issues of private property, overall, there were to be few disagreements about committing to first-generation rights, even as the committee wrestled with the classic democratic challenge of trying to reconcile liberty with equality. Yet what was to distinguish the ANC’s approach to a Bill of Rights was the emphasis that

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was laid upon the inclusion of socio-economic rights, based upon the conviction that while the protection of first-generation rights was necessary, it was not sufficient if the rights of ordinary people were to be realised substantively.34 All this reflected the changes in the international environment and ideological shifts of the late 1980s. A delegation from the committee had visited the German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia in 1987, which led to some thought about embedding the principle of the ANC as a revolutionary vanguard in a constitution. Yet thereafter there was a greater injection of legal–­ constitutional language, drawing upon international conventions and experiences of a wide array of countries, leading to a diminution of socialist influence. As a result, the radical democratic tone of ANC commitments began to ‘fizzle out’, not least because of the growing input of members of the committee and other advisers who were lawyers. Although there remained concerns around what was viewed as the inadequacy of representative democracy in enabling active participation by citizens in government, provision for participatory democracy as a form of people’s power was to be gradually weakened. Indeed, ultimately, the final constitution of 1996 was to phrase participation not as a right, but rather as something to be encouraged through provisions at national, provincial and local levels.35 The Freedom Charter had proclaimed that ‘the people shall govern’, but by the time the ANC came to negotiate on their behalf, it was largely from a perspective of liberal constitutionalism, even if the motivation behind the shift away from revolutionary strategies had been the pragmatic one of pursuing the most appropriate way of achieving power, given the NP’s determination to concede as little ground as possible.36 The Democratic Party: The DA’s website proclaims proudly that its forerunner, the DP, played a vital role in negotiating a constitution that includes most of the principles and ideals the PP first stood for in 1959.37 This is not, by any means, the whole truth. Both the 1994 and 1996 constitutions do indeed implement ‘most of the principles and ideals’ which the DP wanted to see embedded in them, yet simultaneously they laid down forms of state which differed very significantly from those the party had proclaimed at the outset of the negotiation process. Furthermore, although the DP could rightly claim that it played a constructive role in the various discussions to negotiate particular aspects of the constitution (the party’s leader, Zach de Beer, was appointed the first chair of Codesa’s management committee), Tony Leon is correct in his judgement that, through no 34 Brooks, The African National Congress, pp. 122–5. 35 Brooks, The African National Congress, pp. 125–55. 36 Gary Provost, ‘The Evolution of the African National Congress in Power: From Revolutionaries to Social Democrats?’, Politikon, 33, 2, 2006, pp. 163–81. 37 Democratic Alliance, ‘History – Democratic Alliance’, 2019 .

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fault of their own, the DP were mere ‘bit-players’ on the stage upon which the negotiations drama was played out.38 In its initial proposals, the DP had asserted a constitutional state as the foundation for a new South Africa. The constitution should be entrenched and placed beyond the whims of ‘transient majorities in the legislature’ as fundamental law. Being supreme, it would hold the executive and legislature accountable in defence of basic principles. Furthermore, it would establish a federal division of powers between central and regional states as a bulwark against tyranny and to accommodate pluralism, with provincial states having substantial powers to raise their own taxes. Meanwhile, at central government level, the executive would consist of a directly elected President who, while exercising important powers (notably with regard to defence and foreign affairs) would appoint a prime minister capable of selecting a cabinet which enjoyed the support of the National Assembly. The latter would be elected by proportional representation and would have co-equal powers (except with regard to money bills) with a Senate, two-thirds of which would be directly elected by local governments and the other third indirectly elected. There would be a federal supreme court, its judges appointed by the Senate on the advice of a Judicial Appointments Commission representing judges and the legal profession; this would have powers to interpret the constitution. The constitution would include a Bill of Civil Rights which would entrench fundamental individual liberties, including the right to own property and the right to compensation in the event of expropriation, along with guaranteeing regular and free elections.39 In retrospect, it is clear that the finally agreed constitution provided the DP with much of what it had wanted. Above all, it established the constitution as the supreme power in the new state, this entrenching liberal prescriptions for a genuine separation of powers between the executive, legislature and judiciary, an independent judiciary, a Bill of Rights and regular elections, even if the manner in which these were to operate differed quite significantly from the DP’s own initial proposals. Against this, although the constitution was to carve South Africa into nine new provinces, the division of powers between the national and provincial governments fell far short of the federal division that the DP had wanted. Most notably, the powers of provincial governments to raise their own revenues were heavily restricted, rendering them financially heavily dependent upon the national government, even though they were given significant freedom to allocate expenditure between different departments and purposes once they had received it. The resultant division of powers has sometimes been referred to as 38 Leon, On the Contrary, p. 199. 39 Democratic Party, ‘Democratic Party Discussion Document on Constitutional Proposals’, Monitor: The Journal of the Human Rights Trust, October 1991, pp. 75–80. The document referred to ‘regions’ rather than ‘provinces’, but I have changed terminology for clarity.

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‘quasi-federal’, providing significant autonomy to provincial governments if they have the will and capability to exercise it. However, in hitching its standard to the wagon of federalism, the DP had identified itself in ANC eyes as falling into the conservative camp, headed by the NP and the IFP, which viewed federalism as a device for protecting the rights of minorities. Although the DP had explicitly rejected any notions of provinces as being delineated on racial or ethnic lines, the ANC insisted that national and provincial governments should be viewed as complementary rather than competitive in order to promote development, rather than as unequal ‘bunkers’ into which those living in more privileged regions and peoples could retreat to ‘in order to get away from the nation’.40 The DP had been strongly critical of the initial proposals of both the ANC and NP for a Bill of Rights, on the grounds that they provided far too much power to the government rather than protecting the rights of individuals. Although the various lawyers from different camps would claim to have played the major role in hammering out the final version, which is one of the most liberal and far-­ reaching of its kind, the DP lays claim to having put forward numerous amendments in a manner which vastly strengthened the rights of individuals.41 Yet its most important intervention concerned the manner in which judicial appointments were to be made, securing a procedure which was in broad accordance with its original constitutional proposals. A constitutional court was crucial to the idea of a constitutional state, and an agreement was reached that it would consist of the chief justice and ten other judges. However, with time rapidly running out for the interim constitution to be finally approved, the ANC and NP now announced an agreement that four of the initial constitutional court judges would be chosen from the ranks of sitting judges, with the rest being directly appointed by the president in consultation with the chief justice and the cabinet. This would have placed the appointments of judges to the highest court in the land in the executive’s hands, while simultaneously compromising the principle that the court should signal a break with apartheid judicial order. Furthermore, it was in manifest contradiction with their previous acceptance that ordinary judges would be recommended for appointment by an independent Judicial Service Commission, along the lines proposed by the DP. Atkinson argues that this arrangement offered a compromise whereby the NP would gain some continuity with the old order, while in exchange the ANC would gain a prize it had not expected to win: the presidential appointment of judges. The ANC ‘grabbed the offer’, which then found its way into recommen-

40 African National Congress, ‘Transition to Democracy Act: Discussion Document’, Johannesburg, 1992. 41 Doreen Atkinson, ‘Insuring the Future? The Bill of Rights’, in Friedman and Atkinson (eds), The Small Miracle, pp. 121–47.

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dations presented to the full MPNF.42 However, it was met with an immediate and loud rebuff by Tony Leon on behalf of the DP, even in the face of the initial inclination on the part of Zach De Beer, the party’s leader, to accept it in order to get approval of the new constitution over the line. Deep disquiet within the DP, supplemented by expressed worries in the Afrikaans press that the proposal would castrate the constitution, led to De Beer contacting Mandela and de Klerk directly. This resulted in frantic exchanges which culminated in Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC’s chief negotiator, agreeing in principle to the DP’s demand that the president would only be able to nominate constitutional court judges from a closed list recommended by the Judicial Service Commission. However, the agreement had yet to be signed and sealed. Ironically, the DP’s triumph was now to be soured by De Beer, who, in order to secure its final confirmation, gave way on another demand that the DP had been making, namely that there should be two separate votes (one at the national level, another at the provincial level) in the forthcoming election rather than the single vote that the ANC, for obvious reasons, preferred. The deal was denounced by Colin Eglin, who had twice led the DP before De Beer, as having given way on a major matter of principle, but by now the damage had been done.43 Ultimately, the ANC was to reverse its own decision on the single vote at the last minute when it put together a package of concessions (including some greater powers to the provinces) in order to (successfully) persuade the IFP to take part in the forthcoming election.44 Without this about-turn by the party-­ of-government-to-be, the potential for future provincial autonomy would have been quashed, and while the DP would not have been prevented from becoming the major party of opposition, it would have been unable to win control over the Western Cape. For this, ironically, it had the IFP to thank.

42 Atkinson, ‘Brokering a Miracle’, pp. 112–14. 43 Leon, On the Contrary, pp. 221–7. 44 Atkinson, ‘Brokering a Miracle’, p. 37.

3 Securing the Transition? Whites and the TRC A poll conducted for the London Times in 1986 had found that 72 per cent of whites believed apartheid would be gone within ten years.1 The accompanying fears about the consequences of black majority rule ensured that whites would extend the gospel of reconciliation, preached most notably by Nelson Mandela, a warm if still highly cautious welcome. Relatively few whites proceeded to vote for the ANC in the first democratic election, but there was no doubting the hero worship they directed towards Mandela as president.2 Surprise that the ANC was not vengeful was accompanied by massive relief. Even so, whites’ responsibility for apartheid could not simply be wished away. Even amid the warm glow of rainbowism, there was no alternative but for whites to confront the past. The forum for exploring this was provided by the TRC. This sat between December 1995 before handing over the first five volumes of its findings to the new government in October 1988. Today, despite having been subjected to extensive criticism, the TRC is widely acclaimed as having made a major contribution to easing South Africa’s transition to democracy. What follows is an outline of the processes of the TRC, and the extent to which it was able to hold whites accountable for apartheid.

The TRC Transitions to democracy take place in a wide variety of circumstances, ranging from the total defeat of one party to conflict by another (as occurred in Germany in 1945) to situations where parties to conflict conclude that the costs of continuing hostilities outweigh the benefits (as in South Africa by the early 1990s). An extensive literature on democratic transitions is constructed around the 1 2

Cited in Robert Schrire, Adapt or Die: The End of White Politics in South Africa, Ford Foundation–Foreign Policy Association, 1991, pp. 27–8. On the construction of Mandela as an icon of the new South Africa, see Tom Lodge, Mandela: A Critical Life, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006.

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dynamics of such processes, its ‘realistic’ thrust being that successful transitions are required to be pragmatic as much as idealistic and to engage in the search for viable ‘second-best’ solutions which reflect the particularities of power differentials in local conditions.3 Building upon this foundation, the idea of transitional justice proposes that transitions to democracy are likely to be successful only to the extent that they incorporate significant efforts to actively reconcile previously conflicting parties. The fundamental proposition of transitional justice theory is that societies which have experienced deliberately inflicted traumas, such as genocide or extreme assaults on human rights, need to ‘confront their past’ if a successful transition from authoritarian rule to democracy or from violent conflict to peace is to be achieved.4 Serious attempts to address human rights violations as a foundation for the construction of democracy date back only to the Allies’ defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan following the Second World War. These efforts were to be seriously compromised by the changing political priorities of the victors in the immediate aftermath of the war.5 Nonetheless, the lessons learned from those tumultuous years were to be extensively drawn upon during the 1980s and 1990s, a period when a series of countries in Latin America and Southern Europe were undergoing transitions away from authoritarian rule and countries in Eastern Europe from communist rule. Broadly speaking, reconciliation and reconstruction were prioritized over the will for revenge and the attendant danger of transitions from authoritarianism sparking civil war. In establishing the TRC, South Africa was to join this pack, its quest for accountability seeking to incorporate lessons from other nations’ experiments in ‘dealing with the past’.6 There had been strong resistance to accountability by the NP government. It had made vigorous efforts to secure the right to grant amnesty for human rights offences to members of the security forces and others whom it wanted to 3

See, for instance, Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives, Massachusetts, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986; Gerardo Munck, ‘Democratic Transitions in Comparative Perspective’, Comparative Politics, 26, 3, 1994, 355–75; Kathryn Stoner and Michael McFaul (eds), Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective, Massachusetts, Johns Hopkins Press, 2013. 4 See, inter alia, Cheryl Lawther, Luke Moffett and Dov Jacobs (eds), Research Handbook on Transitional Justice, Cheltenham, UK, Northampton, MA, Edward Elgar, 2017. 5 Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994; Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century, London, Penguin, 1998, pp. 232–40. 6 Alex Boraine, Janet Levy and Ronel Scheffer (eds), Dealing with the Past: Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, Cape Town, IDASA, 1994.

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protect.7 However, these were not to survive the negotiation process which, after tough bargaining, culminated in the ratification of the interim constitution on 18 November 1993. This specified that it would be left for a democratically elected government to decide about how amnesty might be granted. The specific proposal for a truth commission was put forward by Dullah Omar, the Minister of Justice in the first democratic government, and was subsequently translated into law by the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act in July 1995. The TRC formally convened in December 1995. Its seventeen full-time commissioners, headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, were required to be ‘fit and proper persons who are impartial and who do not have a high political profile’ and came from a wide range of professions and occupations. The major tasks with which it was charged were: (i) Establishing ‘the causes, nature and extent of the gross violations of human rights committed between 1 March 1960 and 10 May 1994’; (ii) ‘Facilitating the grant of amnesty’ to persons who made ‘full disclosure of all the relevant facts relating to acts associated with a political objective’; and (iii) ‘Establishing and making known the fate of victims’, notably by giving them the opportunity to relate the violations they had suffered.8 The TRC was to engage in a strategy of maximum publicity, its proceedings being open to all who wished to attend, and encouraging citizen participation through widespread coverage in the media.9 Victims were invited to provide testimony of the violation of their human rights. Of the 22,000 victims who provided statements, some 2,000 offered their testimonies to the Commission’s numerous public hearings, which were held around the country. It was a phase when, according to one account, ‘a religious and therapeutic sense of reconciliation’ through ‘truth telling’ prevailed.10 Statements were subjected to careful verification, and if specific alleged perpetrators were named, these had a right to be informed, were given an opportunity to respond and might be invited to apply for amnesty. As the public hearings drew to a close, the proceedings concerning amnesty became central. Individual perpetrators were required to submit applications for 7

Notably by passage of the Indemnity Act of 1990 and the Further Indemnity Act in 1992. 8 A fourth responsibility was making recommendations for reparations for victims of human rights aspects. On this, see Catherine Jenkins, ‘After the Dry White Season: The Dilemmas of Reparation and Reconstruction in South Africa’, South African Journal of Human Rights, 16, 3, 2017, pp. 415–85. 9 Katherine Mack, From Apartheid to Democracy: Deliberating Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, University Park, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014, p. 19. 10 André du Toit, ‘The Moral Foundations of the South African TRC’, in Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Foundations, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. 122–40 (citation from p. 131).

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amnesty and had to demonstrate that their violations were politically motivated and that they had fully disclosed their extent. The Commission received some 7,000 applications, of which 1,793 were heard in public hearings.11 The final stage of the TRC’s work was its writing of its report. Its first five volumes were handed over to the government in October 1998. However, these were met with a blistering response from the ANC, which sought a court interdict preventing publication of any part of the report that implicated the ANC in human rights abuses until the TRC had considered a submission from the party. The ANC’s bid was rejected by the court, but this did not prevent Thabo Mbeki, by now president of the party, from attacking the Commission for its stance of ‘equivalence’, arguing that actions taken by the liberation movement which had resulted in loss of human life or violations of human rights could not be fairly compared to the worse violations conducted by an immoral and illegitimate regime. Despite such controversies, the TRC remains highly regarded. Looking back, over a decade after its work (bar continuing exhumations) had been concluded, John Daniel, a political scientist and former researcher at the TRC, offered a broadly positive assessment of the Commission’s achievements. First, although it was unable to uncover the entire ‘truth’ about apartheid, ‘much truth was established’; second, by making the granting of amnesty conditional on full disclosure, it made a major contribution to the theory and practice of transitional justice; third, its exposures of state brutality and criminality neutralized a potential right-wing threat to democracy; fourth, it further contributed by ‘mainstreaming a reconciliation narrative as an instrument of nation-building’.12 Daniel’s judgements provide a useful framework for evaluating the extent to which whites embraced the TRC.

Amnesty and the demobilization of the right wing The grant of amnesty to perpetrators of human rights offences had been deemed necessary for securing the success of transitions to democracy across a swathe of countries in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Likewise, there were influential figures in South Africa, among whom Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the most prominent, who had contended that the offer of amnesty would be a necessary ingredient of the democratic transition. This flew in the face of considerable opposition from many who opposed such a crucial con11 12

Katherine Mack, From Apartheid to Democracy, pp. 20–1. John Daniel, ‘The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Process: A Retrospective’, in Catherine Jenkins and Max du Plessis (eds), Law, Nation-Building & Transformation: The South African Experience in Perspective, Cambridge, Antwerp, Portland, Intersentia, 2014, pp. 65–90.

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cession to the apartheid government. However, the genius of the TRC was the rendering of any grant of amnesty conditional on applicants making full disclosure of their criminal actions.13 Whites who had actively committed crimes or delicts (civil wrongs) on behalf of the apartheid state were invited to apply for amnesty, subject to conditions prescribed by the TRC. The amnesty process did not require perpetrators to show remorse for their past actions, to apologize or to take responsibility for their criminal deeds. All that was required was that they offer full disclosure of their crimes and prove that they were politically motivated (which in practice meant that they had been authorized by a political authority or movement). The logical consequence was that perpetrators of human rights offences who did offer full disclosure were able to walk free, without taking any responsibility for the suffering they had caused. Furthermore, the grant of amnesty removed the risk that the perpetrator could be the subject of civil claims. Further still, it did not exclude those who were amnestied from occupying public office (‘lustration’), nor did it impose any obligation upon them to make any compensatory contribution to society. These conditions came as a disappointment to many who felt that remorse or apology was fundamental to the process of reconciliation.14 The standard response to such criticism, and one which was employed by Archbishop Tutu, was that amnesty was a price worth paying if it secured the political compromises needed to bring about peace.15 He was hopeful that conditional amnesty would lower the costs of amnesty. It would not be blanket amnesty offered for undisclosed crimes, nor would it be amnesty granted by criminalized governments to themselves. Instead, it would be granted only by individual application, subject to legislative criteria and administered impartially by a quasi-judicial committee headed by judges in a process that would offer a voice to victims. ‘It was thus a process which seemed to promise not secrecy, impunity, and frustration for victims – typical of so many amnesties – but disclosure and at least some form of accountability and redress’.16 Although it was clearly desirable that disclosure 13

Catherine Jenkins, ‘“They Have Built a Legal System without Punishment”: Reflections on the Use of Amnesty in the South African Transition’, Transformation, 64, 2007, pp. 27–65. 14 Charles Villa-Vicencio, ‘Restorative Justice in Social Context: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, in Nigel Biggar (ed.), Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict, Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 2003, pp. 235–50. 15 Tutu was to contend that the offer of amnesty in 1993 ‘was a crucial ingredient of the compromise which reversed the country’s inevitable descent into a bloodbath’ (Sunday Times, 4 December 1996). 16 Jenkins, ‘They Have Built a Legal System’, p. 30.

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be accompanied by remorse, this was too idealistic a condition to impose, and might well have inhibited some of the ‘more resolute and proud perpetrators’ from making disclosures.17 Relatively few of those who had committed crimes on behalf of apartheid came forward. In total, there were just 7,000 applications for amnesty. This compared with some 21,000 victims’ statements complaining about human rights violations, while in many cases perpetrators asked for amnesty for crimes about which no complaint had been made. Furthermore, 65 per cent of those who applied for amnesty were already in custody at the time of their application, and of the rest, some had already completed a sentence. As Jenkins remarks, this meant that in practice the Amnesty Committee served as a de facto parole board for thousands of prisoners who had already served part or all of their sentences for acts which they claimed had been committed for political reasons (although the large number of these claims were dismissed as lacking merit).18 The majority of applications for amnesty were made by members of the liberation movements rather than by members of the apartheid-era security apparatus. Only 293 amnesty applications were received from serving or former members of the security services, 256 from serving or former members of the police and just 31 from members or former members of the South African Defence Force (SADF). As Jenkins further remarks, if these figures were taken at face value, it would seem that the crimes of the apartheid era were committed predominantly by the liberation movements, a conclusion which would be ‘absurd’.19 Even more problematic was that the overwhelming majority of applications for amnesty for crimes committed on behalf of apartheid were made by ‘foot-­ soldiers’ rather than by those directing them. While those who applied from the security forces did include police commissioners and generals, most of the latter who could have applied chose not to. Nor were politicians any more forthcoming. Only two apartheid-era cabinet ministers, Adrian Vlok, a former Minister of Police, and Piet Koornhof, most recently Minister of Co-operation and Development (the department formerly known as Bantu Affairs), made applications for amnesty. In contrast, former president P.W. Botha proved resolute in his defiance of the TRC, declining to appear before it or to answer written questions. Ultimately, he was dragged to court and found guilty of contravening sections of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, only for him to win an appeal on a technicality, at which point the TRC gave up. Former president de Klerk was more cooperative and appeared before the TRC in August 1996. However, he was insistent that within his ‘knowledge and experience’, the government of which he had been a part had never authorized ‘assassination, murder, 17 18 19

Villa-Vicencio, ‘Restorative Justice’, p. 238. Jenkins, ‘They have Built a Legal System’, p. 48. Jenkins, ‘They have Built a Legal System’, pp. 47–8.

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torture, rape, assault of the like’, and that he personally had never authorized or ordered any such action. Later, when given notice of findings made by the TRC against him, he resorted to court action to prevent their publication. Under legal advice, the Commission opted to black out its findings from its final report. Subsequently, it reached an agreement with de Klerk to make a revised finding as published in volume VI of the report, one of the two volumes which made up the ‘codicil’ presented to President Mbeki in March 2003.20 The implication of the amnesty process was that those who had not applied, or applicants who had been denied amnesty by the Commission, would be liable to prosecution. However, in practice, there was to be very limited action taken in this regard. Despite concern that a failure to launch prosecutions risked undermining the purpose and reputation of the TRC, the authorities were soon to find themselves confronting numerous difficulties. A first was that although the required evidence to prosecute foot-soldiers would be more easily available (because victims could often name or recognize those who had abused them), it would be much more difficult to pursue those who had been politically responsible for setting policies, giving orders or tacitly encouraging actions by subordinates that led to human rights offences. One option would have been to take a few high-profile, symbolic cases to trial. However, apart from the problem of which particular individuals should be pursued, there was always the danger that resulting court cases might become pilloried as politically driven. Furthermore, if the authorities prosecuted high-ranking members of the security establishment, would this provoke a furious counter-­ reaction from lawyers representing the latter, triggering civil claims against the ANC leadership and operatives? Beyond that, there was the sheer difficulty of accumulating the weight of evidence required to secure convictions, especially in the cases of the highest-ranking members of the apartheid security establishment, many of whom had gone to remarkable lengths to cover their tracks in order to ensure ‘plausible deniability’. The most high-profile prosecution of a perpetrator was that of Eugene de Kock, a colonel in the police and commander of the notorious Vlakplaas counter-­insurgency group which had functioned as a paramilitary squad, executing anti-apartheid activists or torturing them. When de Kock appeared before the TRC, he not only revealed his involvement in ANC deaths, but also testified to the involvement of political leaders, inclusive of the president at the time, de Klerk. Although he was granted amnesty for some fifty offences, he was denied 20 Burton, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2014, pp. 120–2; 129–30. A former NP MP whom I spoke to about this issue indicated that de Klerk’s claim to ignorance lacked credibility and that it would have been impossible for him not to have been aware of the atrocities wilfully committed by the security forces.

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it for his involvement in the murder of victims who had had no links to the liberation movements. He was subsequently tried for these and was sentenced to 212 years in prison in 1996.21 The denial of amnesty to de Kock may well have discouraged other low- and middle-ranking members of the apartheid security services from appearing before the TRC. Even if they were to admit to heinous wrongdoing, there was always a risk that they would be denied amnesty, and that their superiors would be happy to hang them out to dry. In the event, there were to be very few successful prosecutions. The difficulties of pursuing high-profile prosecutions were brought home by two spectacular failures to secure convictions. The first was in the case of former Defence Minister Magnus Malan and nineteen co-accused. They had pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and attempted murder relating to the massacre of thirteen people in KwaMakhutha township south of Durban in 1987. All were acquitted. The second case was that of Wouter Basson, the head of the apartheid state’s chemical and biological warfare programme. He had appeared before the TRC, which had recommended that he should be put on trial. He was subsequently to face 67 charges including 229 murders, but after a trial of some 30 months, he was also acquitted. When the state failed to have the judgement overturned in the Supreme Court, it appealed to the constitutional court, which found it in its favour, but subsequently the National Prosecuting Authority opted not to pursue the case further. In both cases, the failure to secure convictions was ascribed to unsympathetic judges, hold-overs from the apartheid era, one of whom (in the Basson case) refused to grant key state witnesses immunity from prosecution, thus dissuading them from cooperating with the prosecuting authorities. These failures to secure convictions appear to have reinforced a general reluctance of the democratic government to prosecute perpetrators. Indeed, there are suggestions that behind the scenes, there were dealings between the ANC leadership and the former security establishment to implement a de facto general amnesty, although it has continued to be denied to a number of convicted prisoners, notably those associated with the far right.22 Even though few perpetrators were to face prosecution, applications for amnesty did not come without a cost. The publicity surrounding the amnesty hearings could amount to a ‘public shaming’. Full disclosure required applicants 21 He was released on parole in 2015. 22 Madeleine Fullard and Nicky Rousseau, ‘An Imperfect Past: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Transition’, in John Daniel, Adam Habib and Roger Southall (eds), State of the Nation: South Africa 2003–2004, Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2003, pp. 78–104. Janusz Waluś and Clive Derby-Lewis, convicted for the 1992 murder of the SACP’s Chris Hani (which nearly derailed the negotiation process), remain in jail to this day, as do over twenty operatives of the PAC-aligned Azanian People’s Liberation Army.

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to provide chapter and verse of their involvement in horrific deeds amid the full glare of publicity. Revelations of brutal wrongdoing by ordinary state functionaries, who might be regarded as decent individuals within their immediate communities, could make considerable psychological demands on perpetrators. Jenkins therefore argues that even if it was unable to exact legal accountability, conditional amnesty was capable of achieving moral and social accountability. Even so, she acknowledges that in practice, the work of the Amnesty Committee was beset by limitations. Members of the apartheid state’s security forces were generally reluctant to apply for amnesty, assessing the risk of applying against the likelihood of their being prosecuted. Indeed, the risks of their prosecution had been much reduced by the systematic destruction by the former government of mountains of records relating to the police, defence force and national intelligence agencies, all of which hugely impeded the capacity of the TRC to hold individuals to account.23 Aware that their tracks had been obliterated, most agents of the former regime opted to keep their heads down, although some managed to avoid the risk of prosecution by turning state witness in the trials of others, this guaranteeing them indemnity from risk of prosecution. Jenkins defends the Amnesty Committee against the charge that it was ‘perpetrator friendly’, arguing that its legal limitations had been imposed by politicians. Furthermore, it had to operate within a difficult political context, lacked adequate investigatory resources and in many ways had to learn as it went.24 It also faced concerted resistance from members of the former government, their security forces and the white right. That less than six hundred members of the former security establishment applied for amnesty testifies to the extent of this hostility towards the TRC. Yet, as Daniel observes, the proceedings of the TRC brought forth an ‘avalanche of revelations about killings and other atrocities committed by the former regime’.25 These proved devastating to the reputation of the NP and former security services, many of whom retreated into dark corners and sought to hide from public view. According to Fullard and Rousseau, the exposure of shocking deeds and brutally callous behaviour by perpetrators ‘extinguished the possibility of ongoing denial’ and decimated ‘the moral underpinning of the NP and right wing’. It thereby served to destroy the façade of legalism to which the apartheid state had clung.26 It extinguished any remaining possibility of a right-wing coup. Although it left some peculiarly unpleasant individuals at large, the overwhelming majority were subsequently to keep their heads firmly down and out of the limelight. 23 Martin Meredith, Coming to Terms: South Africa’s Search for Truth, New York, Public Affairs (Perseus Books), 1999, pp. 287–8. 24 Jenkins, ‘They Have Built a Legal System’, p. 59. 25 Daniel, ‘The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Process’, p. 85. 26 Fullard and Rousseau, ‘An Imperfect Past’, p. 82

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In short, few members of the former establishment were prepared to proclaim their support for the politics of the past. What is more, so many ordinary whites became prone to denying that they might have voted for the NP, that it became a matter of wonder how the NP had managed to win any elections at all! Yet to what extent did this imply that whites as a whole genuinely bought the project of reconciliation and nation-building?

Whites and reconciliation Charles Villa-Vicencio, the director of the TRC’s Research Department, contends that the TRC was guided by a notion of ‘restorative justice’ which sought to reincorporate the perpetrator into society while restoring the dignity and well-being of the victim. Yet he also accepts that this was a statement of the ideal, and concedes that the Commission’s realizable goals were ‘simple coexistence, a reduction in revenge killing, and the creation of a climate where former enemies can sit down together and negotiate (sometimes in anger) the creation of a better society for all’.27 Yet, as Martha Minow has observed, truth commissions aspire to do more than that, for they also seek to encourage reflection on the past by ‘bystanders’, those who were not directly perpetrators but who, by inaction, had been complicit in it.28 The TRC was to come under strong attack from critics on the grounds that it had focused too narrowly upon individual victims and individual perpetrators to the unwarranted exclusion of examination of some of the worst injustices of apartheid, such as the implementation of the pass laws, land seizures and forced removals, as gross violations of human rights.29 While acknowledging the moral force of such critiques, John Daniel responded that the TRC was bound by its terms of reference.30 Supporting his interpretation, André du Toit was to argue that the focus on individual human rights violations had enabled the TRC to ‘highlight the extent and brutality of these political atrocities and to establish a base line of historical truth in public consciousness which will not easily be eradicated’.31 One of the TRC’s commissioners, Mary Burton, has similarly argued that the public admissions of crimes by applicants, notably white policemen and soldiers, ‘obliged the white sector of South African society in particular to face

27 Villa-Vicencio, ‘Restorative Justice’, p. 249. 28 Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence, Boston, Beacon Press, 1998, pp. 62–3. 29 Notably by Mahmoud Mamdani, ‘Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, Diacritics, 32, 3–4, 2002, pp. 32–59. 30 Daniel, ‘The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Process’, pp. 70–6. 31 André du Toit, ‘The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission: A Critical Appraisal’, pp. 1–12, unpublished paper, 2003, p. 8.

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up to the truth’.32 At a more personal level, Villa-Vicencio cites an eighty-year-old Afrikaner lady, who had been loyal to the NP all her life, as responding to the confessions of deliberate suffering inflicted on victims by commenting ‘I did not know that my people could have done such terrible things’.33 The extent to which whites as a collective were complicit in apartheid remains a matter for debate. Yet there is a widespread view that the majority of whites – those ‘ordinary whites’ who were not deeply embroiled in the apartheid state machinery – were ‘bystanders’.34 They ‘stood by’ while crimes were committed in their name. By implication, some might have justified them as regrettable but necessary, perhaps. Some might have averted their eyes, choosing not to acknowledge them. Some will have been genuinely ignorant or have pleaded ignorance, claiming that they did not know they were happening. Whatever their position, it would seem that exposure of the extent and brutal nature of gross human rights violations by the apartheid state and its henchmen minimised (if it did not eliminate) the grounds for denial. This, in turn, poses the question of the effect the TRC may have had in convincing whites of the rightness or wisdom of engaging in reconciliation. In retrospect, the immediate impact of the TRC’s revelations would seem to have been more ambiguous than Mary Burton’s broad conclusion suggests. That the TRC massively narrowed the scope for denial is not in doubt, yet its impact on whites remains difficult to assess. What we do know is that there was considerable disappointment on the part of the Commission itself regarding the white response to its work. In its final report, it argued that ‘the white community often seemed either indifferent or plainly hostile’ to its work, and that ‘with rare individual exceptions, the response of the former state, its leaders, institutions, and the predominant organs of civil society of that era was to hedge and obfuscate’, with few individuals grasping ‘the olive branch of full disclosure’.35 To be sure, a register of reconciliation created by the TRC for people to write their reactions received a flood of comments, many from people admitting that they should have done more to resist apartheid. Presumably, many of these were whites. Nonetheless, there were too few signings for Archbishop Tutu’s liking, and six months before the register was due to be closed, he made a heartfelt plea for more participation and signing by whites.36 If it was not due to their outright hostility, failure by white individuals to sign the register or to otherwise engage openly and actively in reconciliation probably followed from a mix of motives and opportunities. Many may have 32 Burton, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, p. 77. 33 Villa-Vicencio, ‘Restorative Justice’, p. 243. 34 James Gibson, ‘The Truth about Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa’, International Political Science Review, 26, 4, 2005, pp. 341–61. 35 Cited by Meredith, Coming to Terms, p. 289. 36 Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, p. 75.

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been willing but unable to sign, given the travel and distances involved;37 some may have been too embarrassed; some, given the social apartness which apartheid engendered between the races, may have felt too awkward to cross cultural boundaries and/or geographical spaces separating white from black communities. Nonetheless, the poor response by whites seemed to indicate a widespread reluctance to take responsibility for the past. This was confirmed by the failure of collectivities dominated by whites to admit their complicity with apartheid. Complicity was not the same as the commitment of a legal wrong associated with a political objective. It was always unlikely that individual professionals would have had any reason to apply for amnesty, and very few did. A few judges sought amnesty for their personal acts performed in the apartheid courts. A few even signed a document acknowledging that the judiciary as an institution had enforced apartheid and had failed to protect people from torture. Overall, however, there was an almost total failure by professional bodies (such as those of lawyers, doctors and journalists), business and bodies such as the leading universities to acknowledge the extent to which they had actively benefitted from apartheid, even though they were rhetorically eager to subscribe to visions of reconciliation. It is, therefore, difficult to disagree with Katherine Mack’s judgement that ‘the liberal individualism that underlay the TRC’s rhetoric of accountability’ effectively let collectivities off the hook.38 Nonetheless, the response of whites to the TRC remains an important criterion of its achievement. A valuable overview of how whites were dealing with the past, compiled by Gunnar Theissen, was published in 1997: after the TRC had been established but before it had finalized its report.39 It stressed that support for apartheid among whites had been strong. Not only had the NP enjoyed majority support among whites in all elections since 1958, but large majorities had supported ‘fundamental structures’ of apartheid such as separate voters’ rolls, the homeland policy, group areas, the Immorality Act and the Mixed Marriages Act. Likewise, during the 1970s and 1980s, there had been overwhelming support among whites for the NP government’s actions against ‘terrorism’ (89 per cent supported the SADF’s attacks on the suburbs of Maputo in 1983 and 85 per cent backed stronger action against the ANC in 1988). Although there was unease, especially among English-­speakers, over human rights violations, there was still a comfortable majority (57 per cent) for detention without trial for suspected violators of security laws as late as 1989. 37 And, of course, the lack at that time of the possibility of signing through the internet. 38 Mack, From Apartheid to Democracy, p. 74. 39 Gunnar Theissen, ‘Between Acknowledgement and Ignorance: How White South Africans Have Dealt with the Apartheid Past’, Johannesburg, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and Department of Political Science, Free University of Berlin.

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Given these findings, it was not unsurprising that when surveyed in 1995, 58 per cent of whites were unhappy with the new democratic political system, and white support for policies which would promote socio-economic justice (opening white schools to blacks, preferential employment for blacks in the public service and redistribution of land to blacks) was consistently less than 50 per cent. Similarly, support for the TRC among whites was decidedly mixed. In 1992, 60 per cent of all South Africans backed the idea of a commission to investigate crimes committed under the previous government, compared to only 39 per cent of whites. Whereas in 1995, 72 per cent of black South Africans felt that the TRC would uncover what really happened with regard to human rights violations, the prevailing view towards the Commission among whites (63 per cent) was one of mistrust. Additionally, support for amnesty for human rights violators among whites (56 per cent) was higher than their support for the investigation of politically motivated human rights.40 Subsequently, after the TRC had submitted its report in 1998, 39 per cent of whites felt that the TRC had failed in its mission to expose the truth about past human rights abuses, in contrast to just 5 per cent of black South Africans.41 These findings raised considerable doubts about whether whites were prepared to make amends for the injustices inflicted upon black South Africans in the past. Nonetheless, Theissen was at pains to stress that ‘the transition to a new democratic order’ was likely to be a lengthy process and that ‘a glib condemnation of white South Africans should be avoided’.42 It was unrealistic to imagine that the death of apartheid would be accompanied by the instantaneous creation of a democratic political culture. It had taken some twenty years for a democratic political culture, sustained by an ‘economic miracle’, to take root in post-war West Germany, and only then because of the demand for greater accountability regarding the country’s dark past from a generation of Germans born after the war. He therefore rested his hopes for a new democratic culture among whites upon ‘a nascent new political generation of white South Africans who are significantly more critical of apartheid and more accepting of the new democracy 40 The need for economy forbids a more extensive replay of Theissen’s findings, but generally, he found that acceptance of the TRC was higher among female and English-speaking respondents, and that there were marked differences of opinion between young white South Africans and the older generation. Furthermore, metropolitan whites were more open to the TRC than those inhabiting small towns or living in the countryside, while support for the TRC increased with higher educational qualifications. 41 Gunnar Theissen, ‘Object of Trust and Hatred: Public Attitudes toward the TRC’, in Audrey Chapman and Hugo van der Merwe (eds), Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Did the TRC Deliver? Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 207. 42 Theissen, ‘Between Acknowledgement and Ignorance’, p. 1.

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than the older generation’. As in West Germany, the younger generation were less burdened by feelings of guilt, and more easily able to distance themselves from apartheid. ‘In the long run’, it seemed likely that ‘the political culture of white South Africans (would) become more democratic and non-­racial as more members of the “rainbow generation” start(ed) to occupy positions in society’.43 The following chapter will explore the extent to which Theissen’s cautious conclusions were justified.

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Theissen, ‘Between Acknowledgement and Ignorance’, p. 75.

4 Looking Back: Whites and the TRC Today In early February 2020, the South African Broadcasting Corporation invited de Klerk to reflect upon his speech to parliament, delivered some thirty years earlier, in which he had announced the freeing of Nelson Mandela. Towards the end of the interview, he was asked whether he agreed that apartheid had been a crime against humanity. Thereafter, the following exchange occurred: De Klerk: I don’t fully agree with that. I’m not justifying apartheid in anyway whatsoever. Interviewer: But why can’t you agree with that? Because it did wreak havoc to millions of South Africans. De Klerk: It did and I apologise for that. I profusely apologise for that. But there’s a difference between calling something a crime, such as genocide is a crime. Apartheid cannot be – that’s why I’m saying this – cannot be for instance – compared with genocide.

De Klerk’s prevarications aroused a storm of controversy and he was swiftly admonished by a host of luminaries, these including President Ramaphosa, former president Mbeki and Archbishop Tutu as well as by a host of public bodies such as the South African Council of Churches. In the days that followed, de Klerk and his Foundation (which had sought to clarify his position) beat a hasty retreat, apologized for offending South Africans and asserted that apartheid had indeed been a crime against humanity. The incident demonstrated de Klerk’s extraordinarily restricted understanding of the doctrine of ‘crimes against humanity’ and his dismissal of the UN’s 1973 Convention on Apartheid as a Crime against Humanity. Although it has evolved significantly since it was drawn up by the International Law Commission at the behest of the UN in 1954, the doctrine defines crimes against humanity as being acts such as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation or persecution committed against any civilian population on social, political, racial, religious or cultural grounds by the authorities of a state or by private 75

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individuals acting at the instigation or with the toleration of such authorities. Given that the apartheid state murdered, tortured and persecuted people on the basis of an ideology which identified them on racial and cultural grounds, it follows that apartheid constituted a prime case of a crime against humanity. This had been emphasized by a panel of prominent South African and international jurists who had presented a submission in this regard to the TRC, which had no difficulty in endorsing their position.1 The TRC’s endorsement of apartheid as a crime against humanity met a hostile reaction from conservative commentators who asserted that apartheid bore no comparison to the acts of genocide committed by the Nazis.2 This argument sought to change the basis of the debate, moving away from whether apartheid was a crime against humanity to instead discuss the similarities and differences between the NP and Nazi regimes. Crudely put, it was being argued that the apartheid regime had not committed acts of systematized mass murder against racially defined populations. Ergo, there could be no viable equation of apartheid with the acts of a uniquely evil regime which had exterminated over six million people. There seems little reason to believe that de Klerk’s post-interview somersault indicated a genuine change in his personal beliefs. However, what matters here is the possibility that his assertions about the moral and legal basis of apartheid continue to be more widely shared. It might reasonably be assumed that his beliefs reflected views still held by many functionaries of the former regime. What was less clear was whether his views continued to be held more widely among the formerly dominant racial minority today. Indications about this were offered by a number of focus groups. Having taken place several months before de Klerk’s interview, they were uninfluenced by the storm that had followed. Inter alia, questions were posed about how the participants remembered the TRC, how they responded to the issues it raised and its outcome. The assessment of their responses has its complications. For many, if not most, South Africans, the TRC has become either a distant memory or (especially for the younger generation) something to be read about in history books. Indeed, the TRC has itself now become history. Furthermore, it needs to be recalled that history is never static, and that our interpretation of the past changes perpetually in the light of the present. Or, as David Rieff has put it, more often than not, remembrance ‘is little more than the present in drag’.3 1 2 3

Ronald Slye, ‘Apartheid as a Crime against Humanity: A Submission to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, Michigan Journal of International Law, 20, 2, 1999, pp. 268–300. Hermann Giliomee, ‘Asmal Offers ‘No Fresh View, No Ground-breaking Synthesis’ of Truth’, Cape Times, 23 October 1996. David Rieff, In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies, New Haven, CT; Yale University Press, 2016, p. 108.

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It is against this background that consideration is given to how focus group participants remembered the TRC and viewed its aims, processes, achievements and failures; whether apartheid was a crime against humanity; how it compared with other oppressive systems of rule; and whether ordinary whites were complicit in the human rights offences committed under apartheid.

White assessments of the commission Discussion of the TRC evoked strong opinions and divisions along regional-­ ethnic and, especially, generational lines. The most negative opinions were expressed by participants in the Free State, historically a strong site of NP rule. From their perspective, the TRC was nothing but ‘a farce’: it ‘led to nothing’, was ‘just a waste of money’. Furthermore, it was presented as having been unfair to Afrikaners, notably by ignoring the gross offences committed against participants’ forebears during the Anglo-Boer war. Any contribution to reconciliation it made was denied. Indeed, it was ‘a way to provoke the whites, like a trap’. The ANC was viewed as just as guilty of human rights offences as the NP (‘look how they killed our young men on the border’). The past should be left in the past, and South Africans should ‘Forgive and forget’. These hostile views were at variance with those of the majority of participants, among whom views on the TRC were broadly positive, despite considerable doubts being expressed about its processes. Only a single participant could recall attending a session of the TRC, yet others had followed it through the media, although younger participants stressed that they had been merely children at the time. Nonetheless, the question of whether the TRC had served as a necessary bridge between the past and the future resulted in careful and far-from-unsympathetic comment. ‘I think the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in its time did a very good job’ stated one participant: But … it’s twenty-five years on. What happened in the interim might have soured the legacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission but at its time, for its time, it was a very good mechanism. In fact, it was replicated in Northern Ireland with the Good Friday Agreement. Nelson Mandela was one of the advocates within that process. So, as a process, it’s seen as having enormous value. (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9)

This view was quite widely shared, with considerable stress being laid upon how this was an important step towards reconciliation: I remember everyday coming from school listening to it on the radio. Lots of snot en trane [mucus and tears], but it brought a lot of healing. People got to give a voice to their pain and their atrocities. They didn’t want something to be done about it they just wanted the truth to be told. A lot of people got a chance for their voice to be heard. Got a chance to face that person and to find healing. And for the people that didn’t want to know, I think it was very good in opening up their eyes … and for bringing a lot of healing … I think it

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This view suggested that the TRC had served an important role in opening whites’ eyes to the horrors of apartheid: It was necessary because … there were a lot of white South Africans who lived under a rock. We had no idea of what exactly apartheid meant because we lived a very sheltered life. So, we needed to actually understand why there was this anger coming out of apartheid … We have raped a nation and had this little Truth and Reconciliation Commission and then expected everyone was going to be ‘kumbaya’ and holding hands the next day and forever amen. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40) I think it was a necessary thing … I think for many people it was an opportunity for them to have all the horrors that they had endured aired. Because until then people sort of brushed things under the carpet … many of us were unaware of the horrors, and I think somehow … that people got a bit of dignity from that. Some of the victims’ families got some, some recognition. And I think that was a very important thing. (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9) I believe it was necessary … lots of us were not fully aware or aware of what was going on for whatever reason and our truth is our truth. It’s our experience and that is our truth but there were other people’s truth and we needed actually to become aware of that. (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9)

Despite these positive reflections, participants expressed many doubts about the effectiveness of the TRC and recognized many of the limitations it had faced. As one participant commented: I don’t think there was the same power transition like in World War Two. The Nazis lost unequivocally and so they had no choice but to be prosecuted and face judgement. The fact that the NP handed over power meant that they still had power at the time. You can’t hand over power without relinquishing, you keep some. You relinquish some of it. So, these people, they were in a position of power, and they abused it to get out of justice. ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24)

In other words, there were trade-offs between justice and realpolitik: In the climate back then, I think what they did was correct. Because ja, they let people off the hook. They were trying to promote amnesty rather than bringing up all the issues and it made for a smoother and quicker transition. Which may have been a better choice economically … ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24)

This meant that the process was bound to be messy and unsatisfactory. In particular, there were differences about the merits of the TRC’s device of offer-

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ing conditional amnesty for full disclosure of offences. Most notably, there were strong feelings about how the TRC’s processes had allowed offenders to avoid accountability: I think it [conditional amnesty] was a very progressive and humanitarian approach to such a callous crime against humanity because you cannot treat evil with evil because you are never going to progress as a nation. So, by saying or by trying to have this commission and amnesty for people who told the truth so that families who lost loved ones or didn’t know how they died or where they were buried, at least those people could get some peace. They could understand what happened at the end of their child’s, or their brothers’ or their father’s lives. And then they can make peace with that. [But] maybe there was no peace for the people who felt that they should be criminally tried and I don’t think giving blanket amnesty to everybody was probably the original process behind the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is kind of how it worked out, but I think there should have been some accountability for the people who committed atrocities. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40) These men not going to jail is not holding them accountable for anything. I still feel those families who was affected most … need some kind of accountability. They need to be held for their actions. These families are forever affected by what was done to them. You can’t just forgive and forget. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40)

Furthermore, there were forthright assertions that the TRC process had allowed the chief perpetrators of atrocities to escape responsibility, and it was the foot-soldiers of the regime who had been caught in the glare of the headlights: … the TRC didn’t actually judge the people who perpetuated apartheid. It just got the trigger-men. No ministers were prosecuted at all. They just got away scot-free … ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 45–55) I don’t think that half of it came out … I mean, we were at war. I was part of it. Whether for the right reason or not, I was part of it. And the atrocities that I witnessed myself personally were horrific and some of the commands that came down from those people that gave these commands were never ever brought to book. (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9) The boys at the top covered their tracks. There was lots of stuff that happened. There was never anything on paper so there was no evidence. It was little people. (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9)

When asked to venture why so relatively few whites had come forward to take responsibility, there were mixed opinions. One answer was quite simply that they could not accept that they had committed offences for which they should be held to account. South Africa had been embroiled in a bitter conflict:

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa They genuinely believed that they didn’t do anything wrong. Especially the top brass. The guys who implemented and carried out apartheid obviously believed deep down that they were superior beings and that other people didn’t deserve the same opportunities they had. And they genuinely did not think they had done anything wrong. They were indoctrinated. Very similar to how the Nazis, you know when they rose to power. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40)

Accordingly, to the extent that perpetrators of offences did come forward, they did so not because they were wrestling with their conscience but because: They realized that, one, they couldn’t leave. Two, they didn’t have money to go anywhere and do anything about trying to change their lives. They weren’t going to Paraguay like a lot of Nazis did after the war. So, I mean, the fact is, they stayed. Well, they thought, if I don’t want to be prosecuted, so I better ’fess up and come to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (Howick, E, income level unknown, 45–55)

Although some who applied for amnesty did so ‘genuinely trying to find redemption’, more usually it was because they wanted to avoid going to jail. At the same time, there was considerable feeling that some who might have been willing to apply for amnesty had been ordered not to do so by those higher up. They had been told ‘to keep their mouths shut’. This was deemed to reflect a lack of trust in the fairness of the process. If you were white, ‘your head was already on the chopping board’: Many of the biggest trespassers did not go and confess because they doubted whether they would be pardoned for the atrocities they committed. (Bloemfontein, A, middle income, 18–24)

Was apartheid a crime against humanity? Given that NP governments had resolutely dismissed the UN’s condemnation of apartheid as a crime against humanity, de Klerk’s opting to duck the issue came over as deliberate obfuscation. Was he implying that he was ignorant of the UN’s position? Or was he now saying that the UN had been wrong? It seems unlikely that we will ever get a straight answer. However, an interesting aspect of the discussions which occurred in focus groups around this issue was, again, the total failure to consider the international legal position. Not once was the UN’s position mentioned. Not once was it ever indicated that international action against apartheid had a basis in law. Instead, while there were participants who readily agreed that apartheid was a crime against humanity, their argumentation was based almost entirely upon their sense of morality. Perhaps this was because there was not a single person who had studied or who practised law among the participants. More crucially, it would seem to reflect

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participants’ past learning and their lack of exposure to expositions regarding the international status of apartheid. A minority of participants, notably those from the Free State (Group 8, Afrikaans), were resolute in their disagreement that apartheid was a crime. From their perspective, apartheid was a system which had ‘worked well’. To the extent that it had gone wrong, this was only because of the abuse of power by individuals, ‘but further than that … the system worked 100%’. Apartheid was problematic only in ‘how it was implemented against certain races’. Indeed, there was strong resentment at the very notion of the criminality of apartheid: I think it is very unfair against people like my grandmother to say that it was a crime. Yes, there was apartheid but I also know how they looked after those that worked for them, they were carried on [as] their hands if they worked hard for them. I feel that it was unfair against those people as there were honestly white people who really meant well and now they look like just everyday criminals that tried to suppress the blacks, that is certainly not what happened. (Bloemfontein, A, middle income, 18–24)

Put another way, apartheid has been misunderstood. ‘You only hear the bad things, never what it really meant’. In any case, argued a forthright participant from another group: … we didn’t use to kill them like they are killing our farmers. I mean that’s a crime against humanity, to see the way our farmers get killed and its brutal murders. They brutally murder them … That didn’t happen in the past. That didn’t happen in apartheid. They just weren’t allowed in our areas and stuff like that. Raping their wives and killing their kids and burning them with irons and stuff like that. So, I think apartheid is more now. This is apartheid, that wasn’t apartheid [inaudible] … now they [have] got apartheid against whites. And they are killing the whites, they are raping our wives, and they are raping our daughters … What they are doing is unhuman. What we did was never unhuman. ( Joburg southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40)

Such explicitly racist statements were mercifully few. More generally, there was readiness to accept the principle that apartheid was a crime against humanity. On occasion, agreement with the statement was forthright: I would say that it [was] a crime against humanity. It outgrew its time. Yes, you mentioned a number of other observations about the Congo, about British rule … but the fact is if one looks at the chronology of those they are aged. Apartheid [was] a modern phenomenon when people knew better and that [was] the horrific thing about it. I think it was an economic system. It was window dressed to have supposedly positive factors. There were none. It was pure domination of one racial group over another. In fact, it was Nazism. That whole philosophy of a dominant race. Yes, there was the Aryan aspect to it, it was primarily economic and if you look at … what we actually let them

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have as non-whites in this country, was little bits of unwanted land. That was a nominal homeland but we wanted them to work for us. We wanted black people in this country to continue to work for us so they gave them this nominal homeland that they could not fit into … (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9)

Likewise: I think it was definitely a crime … wherever one group of people has to live in fear of another group of people or have to live mistreated by them in any way is a crime because that is not the way people should live. I mean the ideal is for every type or race or ethnic group of people to live in harmony together and wherever that doesn’t happen, it’s a crime … (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9)

This latter statement veered towards the more general argument that apartheid’s criminality lay in its discrimination against people because of their race. As one participant put it, ‘the crime was the colour of your skin, not what you did’. Another added that this resulted in blacks being condemned as worthless, that they were born merely to serve whites and that this was all done in the name of God. Apartheid, this particular participant averred, was a crime because it was equal to slavery. There was much other reference to apartheid’s criminality resting upon segregation, appropriation by whites of black land, the poverty which resulted and the atrocities which were committed in its name. There was, in short, a widely (but not universally) shared sense among participants of the wrongness of apartheid. Against this, however, and pre-empting de Klerk, there was a significant tendency to argue that, although it transformed into a crime, the origins of apartheid were benign and, for one reason or another, it was a system of rule that went wrong. ‘It was not the intention to commit crimes against humanity’ was one such statement made by a participant from the Free State which reflected a widely shared sentiment. As expressed by another participant from elsewhere, apartheid: Didn’t start as a crime against humanity. It started as trying to segregate, to kind of make things happier among everyone. Because these tribal people, they [had] their kings and they [had] their leaders, they [didn’t] really want democracy because they had their own way. Apartheid then became an operation thing because the whites [had] more power, [had] more money, and everyone was split up … And that is where I think the crime comes in, but the actual apartheid start, I won’t say [was] a crime but what happened during it. (Cape Town southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40)

Although this particular participant was unusual in his cleaving so closely to a central plank of apartheid (the notion that black people were imbued with ethnicity and wanted to pursue their own forms of government), there was a wider sense that apartheid was built upon a recognition of natural differences:

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People naturally segregate themselves to people they are comfortable with, that is a fairly natural phenomenon which we still experience throughout the world. People of a certain colour or a certain race will align themselves [with] more of the same personalities. The forced version of it I believe it, I believe that it was a crime … (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40) … the core principles of apartheid like segregation and racism were happening many years before it was just formalized … sometimes we forget that it existed way before … apartheid and it will continue to exist way after apartheid ended. ( Johannesburg northern suburbs, A, middle income, 30–40)

In other words, the segregation of the races was a natural phenomenon, and where apartheid had been at fault was in its rigid and legalized enforcement of separation: I mean, black people could not sit with you in the same restaurant or use the same toilets. Apartheid was all over, even at the Post Office, you could not stand in the same queue … That’s not fair. But it is not a crime. (Brandfort, A, lower income, 60–9)

In short, lacking any grounding in international law, participants who agreed that apartheid was a crime against humanity did so because they felt that either its principles or its implementation were unjust. Justice was one thing. Law was quite another: I think it all depends from which side of the fence you are sitting on. (Howick, E, middle income, 30–40)

Apartheid compared to other systems of oppression How participants viewed apartheid’s moral and criminal culpability was further elaborated when they were asked to compare it with the manner in which white domination had been established in other settler colonies and with Nazi rule in Germany. Pre-empting de Klerk, the majority of participants agreed that even if apartheid was a crime against humanity, South Africa had been unfairly singled out for condemnation. Historical knowledge was hazy in the extreme, but insofar as there was a logic to the argument, it went as follows: First, there was a recognition that genocide and other forms of violence against indigenous peoples had been central to the expansion of white rule and colonialism globally, and this was a characteristic which settler rule shared with Nazi Germany. Australia [was] similar to apartheid … they tried to wipe out the Aborigines … (CT northern suburbs, E, upper income, 45–55) When it comes to the issue of [apartheid] start[ing] as a crime I have the opinion that neither the movement of the American Indians … [nor] the

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa Spanish influx into South America started off as a crime. Yet the atrocities started. Same with Germany. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 45–55) In contrast, second, genocide and such extreme violations of human rights had not been committed under apartheid. Indeed, in the view of some, apartheid compared very favourably to what had happened historically elsewhere. It [apartheid] wasn’t a concentration camp situation. (Bloemfontein, A, income level uncertain, 18–24) It’s true, the Germans persecuted and killed the people, we did not experience it like that. (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9) I don’t think you can compare it. The Germans were cruel, Hitler and his people. They just indiscriminately killed all the Jews, I mean there’s no comparison. (Brandfort, A, lower income, 60–9) if you want to talk about … Australia, with the Aborigines is just again wanting to wipe people out. We didn’t want to wipe (people out) … to me you cannot compare what happened to the Jews with apartheid. (Howick, A, lower income, 60–9) It is just like the time of the English when the women and children were put in concentration camps and allowed the children to starve … They burned down the farms to get to the Boers. It’s exactly the same, we are still suffering under this. (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9) It was never a thing of they killed women and children or took their men as slaves to go and work, that was not the idea of apartheid. (Bloemfontein, A/E, middle income, 18–24)

Third, rather than involving the commission of genocide, apartheid had set aside land for blacks and allowed them considerable freedoms: In Germany they decided overnight to kill all the Jews. In apartheid that was not the case. What happened before things went bad the government spoke to the traditional native people and asked them can we make sections of a land independent for you. Almost 70% of South Africa. This is your homeland. You can run your own company [country?] … And they said no, they wanted to be part of South Africa. And thereafter, once they became part of South Africa, they migrated after the Europeans … whenever the Europeans migrated, let’s say Johannesburg for the gold, they migrated after them. Then in the late, late 1980s people say apartheid is a crime against humanity because the police started shooting the black people because they were protesting. The reason why they shot them is not like the same reason why Germany shot the Jews. (CT northern suburbs, E, middle income, 45–55)

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But it was not Jews. We didn’t take everybody and put ’em together and burn everybody. They sent them away, that’s honest, to Soweto. They let them live there. They didn’t go in there and burn down houses and kill everybody. So, you can’t see it exactly the same. ( Joburg southern suburbs, A/E, middle income, 30–40)

According to this line of thinking, it followed, fourth, that even if apartheid was regarded as a crime against humanity, South Africa had been unfairly singled out for condemnation: My opinion is that of, the rest of the world makes South Africa and … everything [about] apartheid … to be … bad. There is no denial about that. It was horrible what they went through. Having gone home late from work getting questioned where is your ID book? Why aren’t you here? Those sorts of things. But I think the rest of the world also fails to understand is that there was slavery in America. There w[ere] things that w[ere] a lot worse than that. There were people piled up on ships getting deported from one country to another where people were dying from sickness, were dying from faeces and infections and those sorts of things, and we didn’t have that. We weren’t cruel like that, but yes, I think the rest of the world makes South Africans, or white South Africans, as terribly racist bad people … (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9) The day they named it the trouble started. As far as I know in America, the apartheid system did not get a name and that is why they do not have the problems we experience. (Brandfort, A, upper income, 60–9)

Afrikaners had been unjustly pilloried, when it needed to be remembered that they themselves had been the victims of genocidal strategies implemented by the British. Depiction of apartheid as uniquely evil was therefore: Very one sided …why did they not take the whites who suffered during that time when the flippen English came and murdered us like that … you can say they brought apartheid, really I feel very bitter towards those flippen English, then they still came to visit their brothers, but they never went to the concentration camps to see who they murdered. (Bloemfontein, A, middle income, 18–24)

Such explicit reference to the cultural nationalisms which divided Afrikaners and English-speaking during the pre-democracy period were rare, yet they surfaced indirectly in the comparisons which some participants sketched out between Nazi rule and apartheid. In particular, there were some strong memories of the devotion to Nazi ideology and practices displayed by the right wing of the Afrikaner nationalists during the late 1930s and early 1940s, and how this left its imprint upon the NP’s imposition of apartheid: I personally think the apartheid government idolized the Nazis. And you can see that in the military for example. It wasn’t called the tank car, it was called

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa the Panzer car. The dogs were named ‘Ronal’, ‘Adolf ’, things like that. The Ossewabrandwag supported the Nazis whole-heartedly. And the Broederbond and stuff like that, they were all Afrikaner nationalist ideals that pointed in the same direction as Hitler’s ideas for the Aryan race etcetera. And the NP definitely represented views that were Nazi-like, absolutely and it shows in their legislation. It shows in their speeches … it’s Nazi rhetoric that they use. They, they’re coming in here and taking our jobs. Like, its inspiring hatred. It’s the exact same thing. ( Joburg southern suburbs, E, upper income, 45–55)

Or, as one participant put it: … take the Hitler example because it’s the classic one … But it’s really just an extension of what we were doing here. … I mean, we love to [recall South Africa fought] on the allied side of World War Two playing the good guy card and everything … Hitler … said the Jews are second rate citizens, the homosexuals are second-rate citizens, the blacks are second-rate citizens, the Asians are second-rate citizens, so on and forth. And as the allies, we turned around and went ‘hold on’, the Jews aren’t second-rate citizens, and ignored everything else he’d said about any other group. So, what I don’t believe we [can] claim that we are in any way superior to the Nazis because we disagreed on one point of the plan. And I think Hitler just got an awful more freedom to run with his idea than may be apartheid South Africa did. ( Joburg southern suburbs, E, upper income, 45–55)

Yet such views grossly offended some participants, who again asserted apartheid’s moral superiority because it had not led to genocide: The Jews who were tortured by the Nazis. They had no rights, no religious rights, so no you can’t compare it. Killed with gas. You can’t compare it. (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9) They just indiscriminately killed all the Jews, I mean there’s no comparison. (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9) Apartheid was a better system than the Nazis under Germany. Yes, they were not slave drivers. Or mass murders. We at least tried to accommodate all to live together. (Bloemfontein, A, lower income, 18–24)

However, being better than the Nazis was scarcely a strong card to play, as it implied that even if apartheid may have been morally superior, it was still constructed around criminality and inhumanity. This raised the issue of responsibility.

White culpability and complicity If apartheid was a crime against humanity, this posed the question of whether ordinary whites had been complicit in its implementation. When participants were asked to discuss this proposition, they offered a wide range of opinions which indicated much soul-searching. It was left to just a few individuals to

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assert white complicity without qualification, but the overwhelming majority of participants – while accepting white fault – resorted to nuancing their answers to a question they found deeply disturbing. The case for white complicity revolved around a combination of being aware of the evil of apartheid, not doing anything to oppose it and accepting its benefits. This uncompromising position was expressed by one participant in terms of a homily: The witness to wrong-doing also bears blame for keeping quiet … (CT southern suburbs, A, middle income, 30–40)

Similarly, referring back to family discussions which had sought to wrestle with the issue, another remarked: My grandfather always said during the time of apartheid, if you were against all these things happening, just the mere fact that you benefited, you are complicit. Because the education system for the whites [was] much better. Money was much better because you always got the top jobs even if you couldn’t do the work. And you knew some people who couldn’t do the work. The same issues we have today, the same as then. And that is the reason I say yes, we were all at fault because we all benefited. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40)

Her view was endorsed by another participant in the same group who argued that failure by whites to take action against apartheid had made them ‘just as guilty because they [hadn’t] done anything to stop anything’. Another observed that white voters, or at least those who had voted for the NP, had known perfectly well what was happening: They knew the laws were being done and they kept those people in power. Even if their one vote wouldn’t have made a difference, still voting for them means they agreed with what they were doing … they still didn’t give the orders, but they were enablers. I don’t know how you can partition the blame. But they were still enablers (Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24) We didn’t protest too much to be quite frank when extreme right-wing Afrikaners – and I am not, were espousing violence against black people in the old days. (CT northern suburbs, E/A, middle income, 18–24)

In contrast, the overwhelming majority of participants found reason to explain or to comprehend why whites had failed to act against or had accepted apartheid. Four broad explanations predominated. The first of these was that the regime had deliberately obscured its atrocities, leaving ordinary whites in a state of ignorance. Under apartheid, explained one participant, the media had distorted white perceptions: Overseas was getting the information we [didn’t] get, so being brought up in a predominantly white environment, we were told another portion of the

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa truth. And then you go overseas and the media was telling you a whole other story … So the media back then was feeding hate and feeding anger … (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 45–55) the vast majority of white people during apartheid … were victims of propaganda. … The human mind is incredibly malleable and if you’re fed information your entire life, you can only believe that information if you haven’t been fed any other information. ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24)

Participants – ‘average church going, people like us’ – who had been devoted supporters of the NP claimed they had not been aware of the atrocities being committed in their name: We worked for the National Party. We voted for the National Party. Did we know what they did up there? … No. Did these people know what the leaders did? Or what was going on? ( Joburg southern suburbs, A/E, middle income, 45–55)

It might have been different if they had known, remarked another participant. ‘But I think a lot of the people did not know what was going on’. Again, this was put down to the effects of censorship and the lack of freedom of the press: ‘normal people didn’t get to hear about everything’ (Group 6). With your average white, some of them were kept in the dark. So, they actually had no idea what was happening outside the suburbs and the cities. They were told, no it’s the same. It’s where the blacks live but it’s the same as the white people and they’re just coming in to work. So, I am not saying all of them but most of them did not know what was actually happening. … a lot of white people said, I really had no idea that this was going on … So, I think the blame shouldn’t, shouldn’t be shifted completely to the average whites, like they should hold some accountability and work towards righting the wrongs that were done in the past. But they should not necessarily be blamed for what those in power did and those who knew what was going on. ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24)

Ignorance meant that whites accepted what the leadership of the NP told them. This view merged seamlessly with a second assertion that the burden of sin lay fairly and squarely upon the leadership of the regime. Even among those who implied or stated they had supported the NP, it was felt that the political leadership had to have had full knowledge of the atrocities. When asked whether the long-serving prime minister John Vorster would have intervened if he had been made aware of criminal activities, participants were in agreement that he would not. In fact, the complainant might have ‘disappeared’ (Group 6). Accordingly, it was unfair to have expected ordinary whites to have stood against the NP. What followed on from this was a third line of argument stating that, for the most part, ordinary whites were simply absorbed by living their own lives:

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For white people … it was just easy to think ‘oh okay well I have my little piece of paradise in suburbia you know where I don’t have to look at people of another race.’ And you know the domestic worker, she will come and she will clean my house for next to nothing kind of things … the majority of South Africans they were just happy to carry on. (Howick, E, middle income, 60–9) I am eating. I am going to school. I am feeding my children and so whatever they are doing, you know what, I don’t want to interfere. If I interfere there is going to be flak on me now I get taken away from my family and put in, either in Robben Island or wherever. So, what do I do now? I keep quiet and respect their wishes. Let them do what they do. ( Joburg southern suburbs, 45–55)

This turning of the blind eye to uncomfortable facts suggested that ‘we are all collectively guilty in some way for apartheid’ (Group 2). Yet some participants argued that any such collective guilt needed to take account of the fact that whites were in part governed by fear and compulsion. Pressures upon the individual were both political and personal: In my day, national service was compulsory. If you didn’t do national service you got locked up … Yeah, you went off to the army, air force or navy. That is what you did. You went and fought in a war and let me tell you guys, when you are looking down at the hell of a gun and you have a gun, who pulls the trigger first? Ok, that is what happens. Am I guilty of an atrocity? Should I be prosecuted? Should I? (Howick, E, middle or upper income, 60–9) There was a threat to the sovereignty of the country as it was perceived then and I sort of followed orders. I don’t know how I would have reacted if they had said to me ‘go fire guns in Soweto’. I really don’t know how I would have reacted then. Thank goodness because I never had to make that decision. But we were collectively guilty … but the day-to-day treatment, perception, we were also scared. Let’s be honest. White people were scared of putting their heads above the parapet and say I disagree with the government. I was at Wits when we would sit in Jan Smuts Avenue and get sjambokked by the police. Not every day but when we did protest in earnest and I knew they were getting filmed … We didn’t wear balaclavas or anything but the fact is there could have been repercussions. There were repercussions. Friends of mine who went further along the anti-apartheid, they were members of uMkhonto we Sizwe. The fact of the matter is that they could have had the security forces doing dreadful things and throwing them out of the window … It took brave people to actually stand up and be counted. And we didn’t do enough. And I am talking about myself as well … I don’t know but I feel guilty that I did not do enough. (Howick, E, middle or upper income, 60–9) Now I grew up with a Nationalist-raving father who played golf with Vorster. My mother voted for the Progressives and wanted to become you know a

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa Black Sash … and my father said if you do that I will take the children away. (Howick, E, middle income, 60–9) I think we were sort of semi-consciously complicit because if you think of your day-to-day life you could see black people being treated poorly. Nonwhites or whites only signs were prolific. It was just about everywhere. You didn’t go to places with a black person. You would not socialize with them because it was not allowed. (Howick, E, middle income, 60–9)

One participant concluded that ordinary whites offered ‘a classical example of the bystander effect’. They might see wrong but were frightened to intervene. They might have been aware of atrocities, ‘but not enough to the point where they were willing to sacrifice themselves or put themselves in danger in order to change it’ ( Joburg southern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). They could not be blamed for having been born under apartheid, ‘but as we got older and were able to make decisions for ourselves then we were complicit’ (KwaZulu-Natal, E, middle income, 60–9). This led easily into the fourth and final issue, that of generational difference. It was bad enough that older whites should be blamed for apartheid when they had not known what was going on, but ‘Why punish our children?’ (Group 6). Unsurprisingly, the strongest views were put forward either by those who had grown up during the latter years of apartheid or who had been born after 1994. I don’t think we can be blamed as it was not a system that was carried over. When I was in primary school and high school, I used to feel guilty, that’s what they taught you in school, so yes, I used to blame my great-­grandparents but as I found more information, I realized it was not my fault. It is about upbringing and education. Yes, your upbringing plays a major role. If you listen to the stories of your parents and grandparents, then you are likely to be a racist, but if you were raised well in a non-racist house, then you won’t be racist. (Bloemfontein, A, middle income, 18–24)

‘We need to have compassion’ for those who suffered under apartheid, remarked one participant, but: We need to understand that yes … people of our age did not go through apartheid. Their gogos and their grannies, yes, they did. But we can have empathy for them, but we cannot take away their pain. We can’t make it right. Unfortunately, we can’t, we can’t be held accountable for what our ancestors did. (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40)

Another participant made a related distinction: This [younger] generation might feel ashamed. Not guilty. I don’t feel guilty. I do feel ashamed. I feel these are the people, the elders we have to look up and respect and learn from. Then, yes, I feel ashamed. Not guilty because physically I didn’t do anything. I was born in ’85. When I was old enough to know what was going on. When I saw the first black kid in my school

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and then we became friends. I didn’t know what was happening. So, growing up there was never a sense of guilt. No, I never. I didn’t know until I was in my teens I never realized what has actually been going on and why things have changed. But I was ashamed. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40)

Such views tended to be laced with a sense of injustice that younger whites should be deemed to have been complicit and should suffer the consequences. One participant was particularly bitter: … [although] both sides admitted to things they had done that were bad, essentially it let off a lot of white South Africans off the hook. On things they have done and got away with. And it upsets me because I, I do feel like my grandmother’s generation, if I looked at it, was the height of apartheid and they’re the generation that had left school, had jobs that was easy to find because of the colour of their skin, they had a better standard of living because of the colour of their skin. They’re the generation that enforced and upheld apartheid and they sent my father’s generation to war over apartheid and to enforce apartheid. And they have a lot to answer for and I feel like the TRC was a great way for them to get out and say, ‘well, we are all sorry, we’re all friends now and forget about it’. And what they have done there is that they have left their grandchildren to pay the bill … I think its cowardice, I think that that that generation should’ve answered for what they done. ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24)

Others remarked: The concern I have now is that when during apartheid I was very young and even now, because of the colour of my skin I am always associated with white privilege … Maybe our father and mothers and grandparents, yes, but this is not really our fight. Somewhere along the line you have to stop labelling me white, a white privilege[d] person when I haven’t had very much to do with supremacy … may be you were three. What was your idea of what apartheid was? (CT southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40) If we need to forgive and forget then we must all do it. Does not help that the young white people of today must suffer because of apartheid if you had nothing to do with it. Most of us were born in the 1990s, how can you be held accountable? (Bloemfontein, A, lower income, 18–24)

Yet there was one participant who countered that although younger whites could not be held accountable for the legacy of apartheid, it was important that they should know about it. She recalled being the only white in her class at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and whenever her black classmates talked apartheid, she had felt uncomfortable. But she would just say to herself: Imagine how they must have felt twenty years ago. So, I will just sit and take it. Because its fair. It’s what we owe them. (Howick, E, middle income, 60–9)

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Assessing how whites look back In many ways, the TRC was handed a poisoned chalice. It was inevitable that it would evoke a wide range of responses, from outright hostility of the former security establishment through to the broad welcome it was accorded by the majority of South Africans. Equally, it is unsurprising that in the wake of its sitting there was to be a wide range of views regarding whether or not it had succeeded in establishing ‘truth’ and promoting ‘reconciliation’. In an early attempt to grapple with the outcomes of the TRC, Deborah Posel and Graeme Simpson observed that the commissioning of ‘truth’ under the auspices of the TRC was always going to be an impossible task. However scrupulous its research and processes, it was always unlikely to produce an internally consistent body of ‘truth’, because the ‘truths’ that the Commission had heard were drawn from ‘different peoples, different cultures, competing political affiliations, and therefore different perspectives on the past’. They accordingly viewed it as having been caught between the search for ‘forensic truth’, truth capable of being employed by the criminal justice system to successfully prosecute human rights offenders, and the search for ‘sociological or historical truth at the structural level’. Whereas the former requires the establishment of proof beyond reasonable doubt, the latter is always complex, inviting contradictory interpretations. They therefore presented the TRC as inextricably linked to the politics of compromise that shaped the transition from apartheid to a constitutional democracy, and as a project that was seeking to build a new nation ‘which would derive from its heterogeneity as a “rainbow” and its respect for diversity’.4 Their distinction between different forms of ‘truth’ is valuable. Nonetheless, it does not capture how popular conceptions of truth are forged. However valuable its contribution to ‘history’, the bulky report of the TRC was never going to be read by any but a tiny handful of South Africans. Its ‘truths’ were always destined to be filtered through to the population at large through the impressions its sessions had left behind and its coverage by the media. Ironically, it was always likely that the interpretations of historians and social scientists would have a marginal effect, not only because they would differ widely in their assessments, but also because the immediate audiences to which they spoke were likely to be other scholars, and it would take time before their assessments would find their way into the media (and, importantly, school textbooks). The relationship between ‘history’, and how it is practised by historians, and popular notions of history remains a highly controversial issue. We are long past an understanding of history simply as a set of facts. These are always 4

Deborah Posel and Graeme Simpson, ‘Introduction – The Power of Truth, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Context’, in their edited Commissioning the Past: Understanding South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2002, pp. 1–13.

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accumulated, selected and interpreted by the historian. No one of sane mind will dispute that the NP won the general election of 1948, but what matters is how the significance of that fact is interpreted. That is likely to vary according to the values and social background of the historian who ‘belongs not to the past but the present’.5 This today is pretty much the common cause. Nonetheless, how and in what form history makes its way into the common domain remains highly contentious. It often does so as ‘remembrance’, which often has a cavalier disregard for ‘the facts’ because, above all, it is crucial to the construction of the modern nation. Individuals will have their own memories of particular events, but it is nations and societies which forge ‘collective memories’. These latter are what Benedict Anderson has famously referred to as ‘imagined communities’, imagined because their members will never know, meet or hear their fellow members, ‘yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’. Such communities are limited because even the largest of them does not encompass the entirety of humanity and sets boundaries which define who is, and who is not, a member of any nation.6 To this extent, nationalism is widely recognized as ‘inventing traditions’, creating myths which forge and hold the nation together and, equally importantly, deciding what should be forgotten as well as what should be remembered. History, it is so often said, is made by the victors. Yet it is only in cases where war ends in a crushing victory for one side that victory grants the power to unilaterally shape the collective memory of a conflict, as the Allied occupiers did in post-Second World War Germany. In contrast, ‘it is only when there is no clear winner that both sides [to the conflict] may be able to sustain their own incompatible memories’.7 In such divided societies, the construction of the nation remains incomplete and differential remembrances of the past serve a present purpose of those who promote them. David Rieff rightly links the perennial raising of the Confederate flag in the southern states of the United States to the political agendas of white supremacists – as doubtless does the continued appearance of the apartheid-era South African flag at far-right gatherings in South Africa today. Against this background, it is unsurprising that our white respondents had little accurate memory of the ‘facts’ of the democratic transition. It was not just that these may have become forgotten, blurred or jumbled with the passage of time; it was also always likely that they would bring to such remembrance the different ‘collective memories’ of the communities from which they came. These would have imbued the ‘facts’ with different meanings. In this, they will As noted by the still valuable E.H. Carr, What is History? London, Pelican Books, 1964, p. 25. 6 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London and New York, Verso Books, 1983, pp. 5–7. 7 Rieff, In Praise of Forgetting, p. 12. 5

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have been no different from fellow citizens of different cultural traditions whose interpretations of South African history are likely to have been shaped by their own communal remembrances. Furthermore, perspectives may have been shaped at a formative age by school and tertiary history curricula which were (and remain to a lamentable extent) hopelessly entangled with the baleful influences of white supremacy.8 These reflections allow for comment on the focus group responses to the issues raised by remembering the TRC. Top of the list must come the observation that there was no unambiguous ‘white view’ of the past. Nonetheless, the majority of respondents were prepared to acknowledge the moral wrongness of apartheid and most were prepared to accept that it was a crime against humanity. However, given an almost universal lack of reference to international law, respondents’ understanding of the term ‘crime against humanity’ was rooted in what they took to be apartheid’s moral turpitude, and notably the commission of atrocities by the state and its functionaries. This indicated a distressingly limited understanding of the deep historical character of apartheid. Although there was reference to segregation as a foundational predecessor of apartheid, the latter tended to be conceptualized narrowly as racial separation, with only a few respondents referring to the manner in which it systematically deepened the economic exploitation of black South Africans. There were not many references to how apartheid was built upon the maintenance of the migrant labour system and the systematized attempt to reverse black urbanization. There were few references to the pass system, none at all to forced removals. Instead, there was a pronounced tendency for respondents to endorse the trope, widespread among apartheid’s previous enforcers, that apartheid had started off with good intentions which for one reason or another (and ‘power corrupts’ was a common theme) had gone awry. Even so, widespread acceptance of the status of apartheid as a crime against humanity provided a solid basis for white respondents’ acknowledgement of the cathartic value which the TRC had provided to the victims of apartheid. It is interesting to place these observations against the background of survey findings by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.9 These record that, across 8 See, inter alia, Melanie Walker, ‘History and History Teaching in Apartheid South Africa’, Radical History Review, 46–7, 1990, pp. 298–308; Keith Breckenridge, ‘Hopeless Entanglement: The Short History of the Academic Humanities in South Africa’, American Historical Review, 120, 4, 2015, pp. 1253–66. 9 The survey findings in full can be found in the annual ‘SA Reconciliation Barometers’, 2019 . Figures 4.1 and 4.2 merge ‘Certainly true’ and ‘Probably true’ under ‘True’. Note that from 2013 on, respondents were provided with a ‘neutral’ option, indicating that they neither agreed nor disagreed with the question being posed. This had the effect of somewhat reducing the ‘True’ responses, as provided in both figures.

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the entire period for which data is available, a solid majority of ‘all South Africans’ have agreed that the apartheid state ‘committed horrific atrocities’ against those who opposed it (see Fig. 4.1). Starting from 77 per cent in 2003, agreement that the statement was probably or certainly true reached a high point of 83 per cent in 2012. Even when respondents were allowed to opt for a neutral position from 2015, over 70 per cent continued to agree. However, levels of agreement among whites were consistently lower. Although reaching 73 per cent in 2010, they had fallen back to 50 per cent by 2013, rising again slightly after that. These results are complemented by responses to the statement that apartheid was a crime against humanity (see Fig. 4.2). Again, overall, there have consistently been high levels of agreement. In 2003, 87 per cent of ‘all South Africans’ agreed with the statement, although the level of agreement declined through the following decade (and was down to 72 per cent in 2017). Yet again, support for the statement among whites was lower than among other respondents. Nonetheless, starting at a respectable 70 per cent in 2003, it increased steadily throughout the following decade, reaching a high point of 82 per cent in 2010. Thereafter, for no immediately explicable reason, it collapsed to just 53 per cent in 2013, before climbing back to 70 per cent in 2015 and 63 per cent in 2017 (when the neutral position started to be offered). These findings are generally consistent with the sentiments expressed by white respondents in our focus groups. There should be no surprise that levels of agreement with both statements were lower among whites than among other respondents. Nonetheless, that a solid majority of whites are consistently in agreement with both statements suggests an overall acceptance of the founding principles of the democratic system. Correspondingly, that something around one-fifth of whites continue to disagree with the statements is similarly consistent with the views expressed in the focus groups, where there remained substantial support for the justifications that underlay apartheid. In arguing this, white respondents were not merely pre-empting de Klerk, but harking back to Hendrik Verwoerd himself: The experiences of our ancestors in this country were rather similar to those of the Americans and the Indians. But while the Americans annihilated the Indians as they advanced through the continent, the Boers allowed the blacks to live. Should we now suffer because our ancestors behaved in such a Christian and humane fashion?10

De Klerk’s repetition of this claim to white beneficence points to its persistence among at least some segments of the white population. No wonder, then, that there remains a more than residual belief among whites that apartheid has 10 Jan Botha, Verwoerd is Dead, Cape Town, Books of Africa, 1967, p. 63, cited by Harris Dousemetzis, The Man Who Killed Apartheid: The Life of Dimitri Tsafendas, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2018, p. 150.

Figure 4.1: ‘In the past, the state committed atrocities against those struggling against apartheid’ (Certainly true/probably true, %’s) 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 2002

2004

2006

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All South Africans

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Figure 4.2: ‘Apartheid was a crime against humanity’ (Certainly true/probably true, %’s) 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 2002

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All South Africans

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been unfairly condemned. Devoid of any seeming willingness to engage with the political and historical assumptions that shaped the post-Second World War era, these beliefs and justifications would seem to provide a continuing foundation for alienation from South Africa’s democracy among a significant minority of the country’s white population. The assertion of white innocence fi nds its ec ho in the ge neral re luctance among respondents to admit to outright complicity in apartheid’s implementation, with various reasons being adduced for whites’ ignorance of what was going on. To be fair, there was much nuance in considering how whites had been drawn into it, why they had generally complied with the law and why many had supported the government throughout. At the same time, there was a significant strain of acceptance of the charge of whites not having done enough to oppose apartheid, and indications of the guilt and uneasiness which goes with it. Yet what also strikes home is how the unease about the part which ‘ordinary whites’ played in upholding apartheid translated into an almost uniform conviction that the political leadership and security establishment shuffled blame for atrocities onto ‘foot-soldiers’. Whether this indicates a widespread desire among white bystanders to deflect responsibility onto others must remain a moot point. Yet what it does lead to is the perennial claim of ‘it’s not fair’ to blame the entirety of the white population for the past, and the need for South Africans to ‘move on’. Against this background, it is unsurprising that there was little support for any renewed attempt today by the state to pursue prosecutions against those who had failed to apply for amnesty. Although a strong case was made by some participants that the passage of time does not diminish the need for accountability, the wider feeling was that the moment for prosecutions had passed. This was principally rationalized by the alleged lack of capacity of the National Prosecutions Authority to pursue cases after so many years and to gain convictions, yet at the heart of it was an abiding distrust in the democratic state. For some, this was quite simply because it was viewed as anti-white. For many more, it was because they were disillusioned with the performance in government of the ANC. Together, such views pointed to the continuing challenge of reconciling the white minority to the broader South African nation and expressed a strain of dystopian thinking that was to emerge as a prominent dimension of views about living in post-apartheid South Africa.

Part Two

Whites as Democrats ‘If I was black, I’d say “fuck the whites”, we never did anything for them.’ Afrikaans-speaking small business owner to author, August 2018.

5 White Hopes, Fears and Fate after 1994 The transition to democracy compelled South Africa’s white minority to consider the costs, benefits and opportunities of a new political order. In the years just prior to the transition, white attitudes towards the prospect of black majority rule had remained strongly negative. Table 5.1: White expectations of black rule in South Africa, 1987 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

The lives of whites will not continue as before The physical safety of whites will be threatened The way of life will not be protected Living standards will decline Crime will increase Whites will be discriminated against Law and Order will not be maintained Property will not be safe

89% 75% 83% 81% 81% 84% 80% 80%

Source: Financial Mail, 7 October 1988, p. 30.

Once democracy had arrived, whites were aware that the protections offered by apartheid had gone forever. They were now confronted by the prospect of living in a democracy, and an extended period of ANC rule. How did they react? What were their feelings and responses? How did they act politically? Did they embrace democracy or merely accept it because they had to? Answers are teased out in the chapters that follow. Yet prior to embarking upon this exercise, it is necessary to provide overviews of five issues which were particularly germane to the shaping of white attitudes. These were, respectively, the guarantees of rights to property, schooling and language; the management of the economy; the ANC government’s attempts to achieve racial redress; fear of crime; and, finally, whether whites would be able to maintain their standards of living.

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The rights to property, schooling and language Contemporary media reports confirm that many if not most whites were swept up in the general euphoria of the first democratic election on 28 April 1994. Photos show whites standing happily in the long queues that formed outside polling stations, often chatting excitedly to fellow ‘rainbow’ voters. Their participation – an estimated 86 per cent of eligible whites turned out to vote – effectively endorsed their acceptance of the negotiated settlement, however nervous they may have been about how it might work out.1 Even better news was that threats by the far right to boycott the election had come to very little. The Freedom Front (FF), the most right-wing party on offer, received only 14 per cent of the white vote nationally – less than half the right-wing vote in the 1992 whitesonly referendum. The overwhelming majority of whites fell in line behind an NP which under de Klerk had transformed itself into a self-proclaimed party of non-racialism and which, by capturing two-thirds of the votes of the white, Indian and Coloured communities, gave some credibility to its claim to being the most demographically representative party in the country.2 The outcome of the election offered hope to whites that they would retain a place in the sun. Further, there was the comfort provided by the towering figure of Nelson Mandela who promised to be a president for all South Africans. It was a promise which was soon to become etched into the national consciousness by his donning a Springbok jersey after the South African rugby team won a famous victory in the 1995 World Cup. Hosted on home soil, it celebrated not merely South Africa’s emergence from global isolation but the country’s putative coming together as a single nation. The Mandela presidency is now indelibly associated in the popular mind with the project of national reconciliation. Even though, as has been demonstrated, the TRC met with a mixed reception from whites, and even though de Klerk was to terminate the NP’s participation in the Government of National Unity (GNU) on 30 June 1996, citing its claimed exclusion from joint decision-­ making,3 there is little indication that this was matched by a withdrawal of whites’ consent to the democratic order. After all, despite de Klerk’s reservations, the Bill of Rights as embedded in the final constitution maintained three bundles of rights which were deemed to be particularly dear to whites. 1

2 3

Johann van Rooyen, ‘The White Right’, in Andrew Reynolds (ed.), Election ’94 South Africa: The Campaigns, Results and Future Prospects, London, James Currey; Cape Town & Johannesburg, David Philip; New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1994, pp. 89–106. Hermann Giliomee, ‘The National Party’s Campaign for a Liberation Election’, in Reynolds (ed.), Election ’94, pp. 43–72. F.W. de Klerk, The Last Trek – A New Beginning: The Autobiography, London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1998, pp. 356–62.

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The first was the confirmation of the rights to property and the guarantees against arbitrary deprivation of property.4 True, there was allowance for the state to expropriate property for public purposes or in the public interest, but such expropriation would have to be accompanied by compensation which was ‘just and equitable’. In turn, any disputes about expropriation could be referred to the courts. It is also true that it was stressed that the public interest included the commitment to land reform, and that this rattled the white farming community. However, the latter was relatively small, and the large majority of whites lived in the suburbs, where homeowners were assured that their ownership of houses was safe. Furthermore, given that a two-thirds majority would be required in parliament to amend the constitution, the rights to property were as firmly guaranteed as might be expected. The second bundle of rights which was particularly dear to whites was that concerning education.5 These established that everyone had the right to receive education in public educational institutions in the official language of their choice. Again, this was qualified by the state’s right to take into account equity of access, practicability and the need for racial redress, yet this provided reasonable guarantees of the continuance of single-medium schooling, which was of particular concern to many Afrikaners. As important was that the Bill confirmed the right of citizens to establish and maintain, at their own expense, independent educational institutions, so long as these did not discriminate on the basis of race, were registered with the state and maintained standards that were not inferior to those provided by public educational institutions. In short, whites were assured that they were free to opt out of public schooling, so long as they were prepared to pay. Third, in the constitution’s recognition of the rights to language, religion and culture, Afrikaners in particular were given firm assurance of their rights to use Afrikaans, and that they were free to enjoy, form, join and maintain any cultural, religious, linguistic and interest groups, so long as they exercised those rights in a manner consistent with the constitution.6

The ANC’s management of the economy As far as whites were concerned, much was going to depend on the ANC’s management of the economy. Major efforts had been made by the white corporate elite to head off an ANC government embarking upon a socialist programme. Their success was signalled by the moderation of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) with which the ANC had fought the 1994 election. 4 5 6

Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, As Adopted by the Constitutional Assembly on 8 May 1996, Ch. 2, Section 25. Constitution, Ch. 2, Section 29. Constitution, Ch. 2, Sections 30 and 31.

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Discarding the options of either ‘a commandist central planning system’ or ‘an unfettered free market system’, this promised pursuit of a development strategy premised upon ‘the leading role and enabling role of the state’ in combination with ‘a thriving private sector’. It scrupulously avoided any mention of taking private firms into public ownership and sketched out a picture of how the private sector could complement the significant role to be played by the public sector in promoting infrastructural investment.7 Given the parlous state of the economy during the latter years of apartheid, this was a prospect that whites were more than happy to live with. Indeed, it was to get even better, for with the election won, the new government went over the heads of the main body of the ANC and its principal allies (Cosatu and the SACP) to impose a Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) programme which shifted its economic strategy in a more market-friendly direction. Justified by the need to attract increased flows of investment and reduce the inherited deficit by cutting government expenditure, this committed to the globally fashionable mantra of competitive exchange rates, the removal of obstacles to the free flow of capital, the liberalization of the trade regime and the promotion of exports. Controversially, too, for an ANC which regarded itself as a party of the left, it pledged the privatization of non-essential state enterprises while simultaneously seeking wage restraint. Its good news was that it promised the creation of some 400,000 jobs, an annual growth rate of 6 per cent by 2000, an increase of exports of 8 per cent per annum and radical expansion of infrastructure. Masterminded by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, Gear was promoted as providing a foundation for transforming an inward-looking, protectionist economy into one which was both more competitive globally and capable of caring for its poorer citizens.8 However, it was roundly criticized by Cosatu, the SACP and others on the left, who branded it as the importation of neo-liberalism. They went on to dub it the ‘1996 class project’, because they viewed it as abandoning the black working class while confirming the ascendancy of ‘big capital’, albeit in alliance with new strata of black state managers and would-be capitalists. Ultimately, Mbeki’s commitment to Gear was to prove fateful, in that when, towards the end of his second term as president, he sought re-election as president of the ANC and ran in competition against Jacob Zuma, it lost him the crucial support of key constituencies within the party. As a result, he was to go down in a stunning defeat at the ANC’s national congress in Polokwane in December 2007 to a man he had dismissed as his own deputy president on suspicions of corruption. 7 ANC, The Reconstruction and Development Programme, Johannesburg, Umanyano Publications, 1994, pp. 78–9. 8 Alan Hirsch, Season of Hope: Economic Reform under Mandela and Mbeki, Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2000. Hirsch worked in the presidency under Mbeki.

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In practice, Gear’s promises far outpaced its achievements. For a start, it failed to attract the hoped-for flows of foreign investment while facilitating a major outflow of domestic capital, as major South African companies relocated their head offices and primary listings to overseas stock exchanges. Worse, by abruptly exposing key sectors of manufacturing, notably clothing and textiles, to foreign competition they were ill-equipped to meet, Gear led to significant de-industrialization and job losses. Similarly, in order to compete globally, commercial farmers shed workers and became more capital-intensive. Nonetheless, looking back, one major international review was to characterize the early years of the post-apartheid period as the economy’s ‘golden years’.9 While short of the hoped-for 6 per cent, the annual growth rate averaged 3.6 per cent between 1994 and 2007, more than double the rate achieved between 1980 and 1994; apartheid government debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) had exceeded 50 per cent by 1995, but was brought down to 27 per cent by 2007; and although there were serious job losses, overall employment (albeit generously defined) increased from 7.9 million in 1994 to 14.5 million in 2012. Meanwhile, this was accompanied by a substantial transfer of resources to the old, disabled, unemployed and for child support via an expansion of social grants from just over 2.4 million in 1996 to over 12.4 million in 2008. Although the level of these payments was extremely modest, they provided for a significant fall in the proportion of people living in extreme poverty.10 The post-apartheid economy was never to be in such relatively rude health again. Attempts were made to compensate for Gear’s failings, notably its incapacity to make a serious dent in unemployment, which had continuously hovered in excess of 20 per cent. This saw the launching of new programmes which sought to shift policy towards more active state involvement to little overall effect. However, any government which came after the Mbeki years was going to be constrained by the fall-out from the global financial crash of 2008. Initially, South Africa had proved relatively well prepared to meet the economic headwinds, in part because strict housekeeping had ensured greater regulation of the banking sector than in countries where the financial sector had engaged in an orgy of poorly secured lending, and in part because of the infrastructural spending that went into the country’s hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Nonetheless, neither good fortune nor tight fiscal management was going to spare South Africa the consequences of depression, and during President Jacob Zuma’s first term in office (2009–14), fall in global demand for commodities and manufactured goods began to hit home. The growth rate fell to around 9

Goldman Sachs, ‘Two Decades of Freedom: What South Africa Is Doing with It, and What Needs to Be Done’, 2013 . 10 Statistics are drawn from the invaluable annual South Africa Surveys published by the IRR.

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2.3 per cent. Jobs began to be lost; the mining and manufacturing sectors began to struggle; the Rand began a long decline against the dollar; and overall confidence in the economy began to wane. Meanwhile, South Africa had become ranked as the most unequal society in the world, with inequality strongly overlapping with race (with 87 per cent of whites reckoned to be middle or upper class, compared with 14 per cent of black Africans in 2008).11 Thereafter, the economy went into a slide from which it has yet to recover. Crucial to this was that the ANC under Zuma scored a succession of own goals. Corruption had increasingly become a problem since 1994, yet was perceived to reach new heights under Zuma, who himself became embroiled in a litany of scandals.12 Under Pravin Gordhan, who succeeded Trevor Manuel as finance minister in 2009, the Treasury made valiant efforts to rein in wasteful expenditure by the provinces, ministries and state-owned enterprises (SOEs), but met with only partial success – and much push-back. Worse was to come. The second term of the Zuma government became synonymous with ‘state capture’, a systematic attempt by Zuma, in league with an immigrant Indian family (the Guptas) and a power elite which gathered around him, to use the procurement budgets of ministries, SOEs and other public bodies to divert public resources into private hands.13 Major SOEs, notably Transnet, Eskom and South African Airways, accumulated massive debts and turned to the Treasury for repeated financial bailouts. The crisis at Eskom, in particular, had a massively damaging effect on the economy, as it accumulated a massive debt (increasing from an original R165 billion to an estimated R451 billion by 2019) which it was unable to service. Huge new power stations rashly commissioned in 2007 at Medupi and Kusile in Limpopo experienced major technical problems, delays and cost overruns. Increased prices for electricity severely constrained consumption. The switching of contracts for supply of coal from established suppliers to politically connected ‘tenderpreneurs’ led to expensive but poor-quality deliveries, adding to major problems at existing power stations which resulted from lack of maintenance. These and other issues resulted in ‘load-shedding’, or recurrent black-outs, which severely interrupted production at mines, factories and offices.14 Inter alia, Institute of Race Relations, South Africa Survey 2020, Johannesburg, Institute of Race Relations. 12 Susan Booysen, Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2015. 13 The most comprehensive analysis is offered by Ivor Chipkin and Mark Swilling (and eight others), Shadow State: The Politics of State Capture, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2018. 14 Neva Makgetla, The Crisis at the State-Owned Enterprises, Trade and Industrial Strategies, Policy Brief 1/2020 . 11

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When the Treasury sought to fight back against state capture – notably when Gordhan’s own replacement (in 2014) as finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, refused to sign off on a transparently unaffordable deal between South Africa and Russia whereby the latter’s nuclear power agency, Rosatom, would be contracted to build a new nuclear power station – Zuma responded by replacing him with an unknown ANC backbencher, Des van Rooyen, on 9 December 2015. Chaos ensued on the financial markets as the Johannesburg Stock Exchange ( JSE) tanked and the Rand dived. Such was the alarm that it brought the antistate-capture forces within the ANC into the open. Headed by Cyril Ramaphosa, deputy president since 2014, they forced Zuma to reverse his course. Much to his chagrin, he was compelled to shift van Rooyen sideways within the cabinet and reinstate Gordhan as finance minister. Nonetheless, efforts to capture the state resumed. As the end of Zuma’s second term of office loomed, increasingly frantic efforts were made to sign the nuclear deal. This would allegedly have enriched the president’s son, Duduzane Zuma, and the Guptas, who between them had acquired a uranium mine in preparation for the project. Again, the Treasury, buoyed by successful court actions filed by environmental activists and wider opposition forces, worked to block the deal, until in March 2017, Zuma again sought to override resistance by abruptly dismissing Gordhan and replacing him with the politically compliant Malusi Gigaba, who as Minister of Home Affairs had waived official procedures to enable the Guptas to obtain South African citizenship. However, just a few days later, Gigaba found himself presenting an annual budget to parliament whose essential message was that the South African cupboard was worryingly bare: growth was down to a mere 1.4 per cent for a growing population, national debt had climbed to 56 per cent and other official statistics were similarly depressing. A downgrade by the international ratings agencies was now threatening to drop South Africa’s investment rating into junk territory.15 The state-capture saga was eventually to be brought to an end by Cyril Ramaphosa’s narrowly defeating the favoured candidate of the Zuma faction, the president’s former wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, at the ANC’s national congress in December 2017, and his subsequently persuading the party to demand Zuma’s early resignation as state president in March 2018. Thereafter, twin commissions of inquiry (the first into state capture and the second into impropriety at the public investment corporation) began to lay the ground for prosecution of offenders. Viewed as a constitutionalist and considered competent, Ramaphosa enjoyed personal popularity far beyond the ANC. This was to prove crucial in securing the return to power of the ANC at the April 2019 election, albeit with

15

A valuable overview of the economy in this period is provided by Claire Bisseker, On the Brink: South Africa’s Political and Fiscal Cliff-Hanger, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2017.

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its lowest proportion of the vote yet.16 Flushed with victory, Ramaphosa promised South Africa a ‘New Dawn’. However, with his freedom of action severely constrained by the continuing strength of the Zuma faction serving as a block to structural reform, daybreak was to prove a long time in coming.17 Two decades into democracy, trust in the ANC’s capacity to manage the economy, not merely among whites but among all South Africans, was at its lowest ebb since 1994.

Racial redress Once in office, it was politically necessary for the ANC to address the needs of its mass constituency. The constitutional settlement had guaranteed that white civil servants would be guaranteed their jobs for at least five years, full pay-outs if retrenched and their pensions. In practice, the ANC distrusted the willingness of Afrikaner civil servants to serve the democratic state, and from early on turned to the device of ‘deployment’, whereby party loyalists and ‘historically disadvantaged groups’ were appointed to fill posts in the public service. As deployment was combined with pressure upon white incumbents to vacate their posts and accept retrenchment packages, the public service underwent a rapid ‘transformation’ (basically the replacement of white employees with black until a goal of ‘demographic representivity’ was achieved). This was given legal substance by the passage of the Employment Equity Act in 1998, whose twofold purpose was to promote equity in the workplace (private as well as public) by eliminating ‘unfair discrimination’ and redress racial imbalances by ‘affirmative action’. By 2006, whites (9.6 per cent of the population) constituted a mere 13 per cent of the public service, down from a much higher proportion in 1994.18 Most of these were concentrated in the upper echelons, as they possessed valuable skills and experience. Meanwhile, private employers employing more than fifty people were required to submit annual reports on their progress to a Commission for Employment Equity. 16 Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall (eds), Election 2019: Change and Stability in South Africa’s Democracy, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2019. 17 On the prospects and potential for structural reform for a more inclusive economy, see Mcebisi Jonas, After Dawn: Hope after State Capture, Johannesburg, Picador Africa, 2019. 18 Exact proportions for 1994 are impossible to give because of the segmentation of the apartheid state into central and provincial governments and six ‘self-­governing’ homelands, along with the four nominally independent homelands. Key sources are Vino Naidoo, ‘Assessing Racial Redress in the Public Service’, in Kristina Bentley and Adam Habib (eds), Racial Redress and Citizenship in South Africa, Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2008, pp. 99–128; C. Milne, ‘Affirmative Action in South Africa: From Targets to Empowerment’, Journal of Public Administration, 44, 4.1, 2009, pp. 969–90.

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The origins of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), which accompanied equity employment, lay in the late apartheid period as large-scale capital came to appreciate the looming danger of an ANC government. Given the racially polarized character of the economy, there was a need to protect South African capitalism by some appropriate redistribution of capital to blacks and their incorporation into management. But how to do it? Initially, in the 1980s, major conglomerates (notably Barlow Rand, Anglo-American, Sanlam and Rembrandt) looked for potential partners and recruits among the small African entrepreneurial class which had developed in the impoverished margins of the economy. Subsequently, as the transition loomed, they began to focus upon cultivating relations with individuals who were politically close to the ANC. The latter reciprocated by proving eager to ‘deploy’ trusted individuals (the most notable of whom was Cyril Ramaphosa) to become beneficiaries of empowerment deals, whereby large corporations transferred subsidiaries or equity into black hands on highly favourable terms, the entire process accompanied by the recruitment of carefully selected blacks with the right political connections onto boards or into senior management.19 An early flurry of BEE deals saw black business reportedly capturing around 10 per cent of equity on the JSE between 1994 and 1997. However, because most deals were debt-funded and repayment was dependent upon a rising market, this early phase of BEE was brought to its knees when the JSE crashed as a result of the Asian crisis in 1997–8. The proportion of black equity on the JSE collapsed to between 1 and 4 per cent, leaving the emerging stratum of black capitalists as deeply disenchanted as they were indebted.20 The result was the establishment of a BEE Commission, chaired by Ramaphosa, which delivered its report in April 2001. This recommended pursuit of a state-driven strategy setting guidelines and regulations, fixing targets and imposing obligations on private companies and SOEs over a ten-year period. The Mbeki government responded by establishing a wide-ranging programme to drive BEE forward. This led to the drawing up of a ‘transformation’ charter that set BEE targets which the private sector would be required to follow, followed by demands that different sectors of industry draw up their own codes of empowerment. Subsequently, the Broad-Based Black Empowerment Act of 2003 laid down ten codes of good practice to which industrial sector codes would have to conform, this providing the foundation for later legislation, relating to particular sectors, which steadily increased the demands being made on large companies. Key to the process was that adherence to the codes would be required of firms competing for government contracts. The immediate outcome Roger Southall, ‘The ANC and Black Capitalism in South Africa’, Review of African Political Economy, 111, 2004, pp. 313–25. 20 Sean Jacobs, ‘About Turn: The ANC and Economic Empowerment’, 2002 . 19

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was a significant increase in the value of disclosed BEE transactions, from some R90 billion between 1996 and 2003 to some R350 billion between 2004 and 2008.21 However, from the point of view of the government (which had espoused a targeted level of 25 per cent black ownership of the JSE) and, more widely, aspirant beneficiaries of BEE, this fell far short of what was required. It was primarily the segment of the would-be black capitalist class that was left out or marginal to the BEE value chain which congregated behind Zuma when he launched his bid for the presidency with a campaign that built upon discontent among the political elite and black business and the feeling that too little had changed since 1994. The ‘Polokwane moment’ subsequently gave rise to a new power elite that found a language in a narrative of radical reform that claimed it spoke for the ‘ordinary people’, those who did not speak English well, those who were poorly educated, who lived in small towns and rural areas and who, above all, felt excluded from the economy and the formal institutions of the state. They were to pursue a politics that was profoundly mistrustful of the ‘formal rules of the game’ and which depicted the Constitution as being rigged in favour of whites and urban elites. The ideology that was to take shape as Radical Economic Transformation (RET) was thus presented as one which would, when necessary, require the breaking of the rules. It thus presented a fundamental challenge to the notion of the negotiated settlement as a framework for transformation.22 The principal enemy of transformation was pilloried as ‘white monopoly capital’ (WMC).23 No credence was given to claims that the large corporations had de-racialized. BEE was demonized as empowering a small number of black capitalist fat-cats, and it was stressed repeatedly that ownership and control of the corporate sector remained overwhelmingly in white hands. This narrative carried considerable punch. Despite extensive changes which had occurred within the corporate sector since 1994 (notably via ‘unbundling’ and the increased internationalization of investment), ownership remained heavily skewed in favour of whites. Similarly, although there had been a substantial increase in the number of blacks sitting on corporate boards and occupying top managerial positions in large companies, they remained far outnumbered by their white counterparts.24 For all that the narrative about WMC highlighted continuing white domination of the private sector, its employment as a weapon deployed by the Zuma Jennie Cargill, Trick or Treat: Rethinking Black Economic Empowerment, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2010, p. 33. 22 I have paraphrased freely here from Chipkin and Swilling, Shadow State, p. 40. 23 Chris Malikane, ‘The Unfettered Power of White Monopoly Capital’, Sunday Independent, 3 April 2017. 24 Blacks occupied only a third of seats on the boards of the JSE’s top fifty firms, and the large majority of these were non-executive positions. IRR, South Africa Survey 2010–11, p. 350. 21

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faction within the ANC resulted in strong criticism being levied at its proponents. Indeed, the SACP’s Jeremy Cronin protested against what he termed the ‘vulgarisation of the monopoly capital debate’ (which had a long history in ANC liberation circles). Those who had congregated behind RET, he argued, represented ‘a demagogic right-wing, populist current that represents the class interests of those bent on the most unprincipled primitive accumulation’. This ‘new tendency’ railed against WMC, but all they were hearing was one word: ‘white’.25 Cronin’s characterization of the class nature of the Zuma coalition calling for RET was apposite. Even so, it remained the case that South African capitalism had not only maintained its ‘monopolistic’ character, was also still overwhelmingly ‘white’.

Fear of crime South Africa is notorious for its high levels of crime. In 2017, South Africa was reported as having the fifth-highest murder rate in the world, with 35.8 murders per 100,000 population.26 The country is also known for disturbingly high levels of violent crime, rape and other forms of sexual violence, robberies, xenophobic violence and so on. Consequently, despite multiple warnings from criminologists that measurement of crime in South Africa is fraught with all sorts of problems, a widespread perception persists that crime has increased markedly since 1994 and that ordinary, law-abiding citizens are under perpetual threat. Fear of crime among whites was an abiding accompaniment of the transition. During the 1980s, the political rhetoric on either side of the apartheid divide was full of imagery of violence and popular exhortations for ‘armed struggle’ rebuffed by regime talk of combatting ‘total onslaught’. Incursions by police and the army into the townships indicated the state’s determination to quell protest by use of violence, and this elicited a violent response in return, from the throwing of petrol bombs through to the ‘necklacing’ of alleged traitors to the cause. Recent analysis has confirmed that there was a steady surge of murders, a decent enough proxy for violent crime generally, during ‘the struggle years’, increasing from around 25 per 100,000 in the mid-1970s to a peak of around 78 per 100,000 in 1993. Recorded rates of other crimes like robbery and rape rose rapidly at the same time as that for murder.27 It is unsurprising, therefore, given Jeremy Cronin, ‘On the BMF and BUSA’, Umsebenzi Online, 15, 20 July 2011, reproduced by Politicsweb . 26 ‘South Africa Crime: Can the Country Be Compared to a War Zone?’, BBC News, 18 September 2018 . 27 Anine Kriegler and Mark Shaw, ‘Facts Show South Africa Has not Become More Violent since Democracy’, The Conversation, 2016 . 25

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that the ANC were demonized as barbaric by the apartheid regime, that whites were encouraged to equate defeat with the end of civilization. Yet once the democratic transition was underway, whites were being encouraged to believe that civilization would survive. Indeed, it was hoped that the end of violent political conflict would bring an associated decline in violent crime. There is a substantial battery of factors contributing to the high levels of violence and crime. These stem from the massive extent of poverty and unemployment, hugely aggravated by gross inequality between different segments of the population. Against the background of the long history of migrant labour, which separated husbands from wives and children for long periods, these factors help to explain the crisis of family life in many impoverished communities: inconsistent parenting, vulnerable childhoods, poor youth socialization and a widespread belief among males that violence against women is legitimate and justified. Add to this a general prevalent code of criminality and normalization of violence as a way of resolving conflicts long sustained by the ready availability of firearms. Add, too, a police system that is seriously under-resourced, schooled in coercive rather than consensual policing and prone to infiltration by criminal networks, plus a criminal justice system which at its lower levels is inefficient, often uncaring and susceptible to corruption. In sum, it is little wonder that life for so many South Africans is insecure and dangerous.28 Despite this troubling background, careful analysis by Anine Kriegler and Mark Shaw has demonstrated that after peaking in 1993, the murder rate in South Africa began to decline, from 74 murders a day in 1994 to 49 in 2015, despite population growth of around 40 per cent. Rates of non-fatal assault (including common assault, serious assault and attempted murder) dropped by similar margins, although there were some increases in various types of robbery, so not all forms of violence declined. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that, after twenty years of democracy, the people of South Africa were about half as likely to be assaulted or murdered than they were at the end of apartheid – even though, worryingly, the trend went into something of a reverse after 2015.29 This relatively good news does not negate the reality that crime rates remain alarmingly high. Yet the impact is uneven, varying widely by spatial area and social group, apartheid’s socio-spatial legacy continuing to ensure that crime remains concentrated in poor black communities and areas. Historically white suburbs experience substantially less crime per capita than historically black areas and are disproportionately affected by crimes against property rather than against persons. In contrast, black areas suffer much higher rates of crimes 28

By far the most valuable source on criminality, violence, policing and related public policy is the large body of reports produced by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. 29 Anine Kriegler and Mark Shaw, A Citizen’s Guide to Crime Trends in South Africa, Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2016.

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against both property and persons, these trends underpinned by such factors as white areas being better policed and more protected by infrastructure, the latter of which ranges from the widespread presence of private security companies through to better street lighting, high walls, electric fences and security alarms. Despite this vast differential in exposure to risk, white and black areas both share a common fear of crime. Inevitably, this is shaped by apartheid spatial history, blacks believing their historic areas and informal settlements are the principal locus of crime, whites fearing city centres rather than their residential areas. A study of Cape Town recorded that while white fears focused upon neighbourhood boundaries, black respondents feared their immediate surroundings. Nonetheless, it went on to describe white areas as engulfed by an ‘urban panic’ about crime, having shifted away from fears about political insurgency. This has resulted in a relentless trend towards the ‘fortification’ of private residences and neighbourhoods in better-off areas, finding their extreme presence in the increasing popularity of gated communities, which only reinforces long-­standing patterns of de facto spatial separation by race and wealth.30 Despite the indications that the impact of crime upon black South Africans is considerably worse than upon whites, levels of panic about crime among the latter remain high. This has led to major controversies about what are described as ‘farm murders’, these underpinned by argumentation that they are indicative of politically related campaigns to expropriate white farms and attack the rights of racial minorities.31 Although this is most actively promoted by individuals and organizations on the far right, it speaks to a much wider sense of insecurity among white South Africans. The final factor that drives urban panic is the lack of trust in the capacity of the police to prevent and solve crime and successfully prosecute criminals. This is a result of the widely acknowledged failures of policing and accompanying problems in the justice system. Yet central to this is the widespread conviction that under the ANC corruption has flourished and there is no political will to do anything about it. It is a belief that has been much strengthened by state capture, dodging and diving by former president Zuma to avoid prosecution for corruption and the seeming impunity of many ANC politicians suspected of using their influence to divert public resources into private pockets. It is a belief which erodes faith in South African democracy – and not just among white South Africans.32 30 Charlotte Lemanski, ‘A New Apartheid? The Spatial Implications of Fear of Crime in Cape Town, South Africa’, Environment and Urbanization, 16, 2, 2004, pp. 101–11. 31 See notably AfriForum, ‘The Persecution of Minority Communities in South Africa’, Politicsweb, 29 January 2020 . 32 In a survey conducted by AfroBarometer in 2018, 66 per cent of respondents indicated that they trusted the police ‘just a little’ or not at all, and 60 per cent mistrusted

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The maintenance of white prosperity Apartheid was notorious for the extent of racial inequality. Although changes within the economy from the 1970s onwards led to some diminution in, notably, the inequalities of income and education, racial inequality when apartheid came to an end remained stark. Whites earned nearly six times more than black Africans, had two-and-a-half times more spent on their schooling than other South Africans, owned an overwhelming proportion (nearly 70 per cent) of the land and had a considerably higher life expectancy (73.6 compared with an average of 65.6 for all South Africans).33 Determined efforts by governments since the 1920s to resolve ‘the poor white’ problem, given greater impetus after 1948 as the NP empowered Afrikaners and boosted their upward mobility, meant that by the early 1990s, bar a small extraordinarily prosperous white elite, the overwhelming proportion of whites had become ‘middle class’, while racially discriminatory wage structures meant that what remained of the white working class (perhaps around 15 per cent of the white population) enjoyed a relatively high standard of living.34 The Bill of Rights listed ‘the achievement of equality’ as a foundational value of the democratic republic. It elaborated that ‘Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms’, this allowing the passage of ‘legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination’.35 The message of the Bill was that the newly democratic South Africa was committed to ‘the progressive realization’ of rights to housing, education, healthcare and so on as far as was practical, with due regard to ‘equity’ and the availability of resources. It did not use such terminology, but it was indicating very clearly that South Africa’s transition was very much a ‘bourgeois revolution’. By the early 1990s, most whites had recognized, albeit with varying levels of enthusiasm, that there were no viable alternatives to democratization and the ANC politicians. Cited by Andrew Faull, ‘When Corruption Stops, Trust in Government can Start’, Institute for Security Studies, 12 March 2019 . 33 Life expectancy and income figures drawn from IRR, South Africa Survey 1996/97, pp. 14; 379. Schooling sourced from Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd, Equity: Education Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2004, p. 102. Land ownership from Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of Western Cape, ‘The Distribution of Land in South Africa: An Overview’, Fact Check No. 1, 2013. 34 Appropriate figures are hard to come by, but just seven years after the transition, whites employed in manual occupations (craft and related trade, plant and machine operators, ‘elementary’ occupations and domestic workers) accounted for a mere 12.6 per cent of whites in employment. See IRR, South Africa Survey 2019, p. 265. 35 Constitution, Ch. 2, Section 9.

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accompanying de-racialization. Yet, as the survey cited above indicates, they worried that majority rule constituted a major threat to their standard of living and their way of life. The most visible change, when change did come, was in the form of pressures upon whites to vacate their jobs in the public service. These were soon to be added to by the passage of the equity employment legislation and implementation of the policies of BEE. What overall effect these had upon whites remains difficult to determine, although personal observation over the past two decades suggests that, ironically, by propelling whites into the private sector, equity employment and BEE ended up by inadvertently promoting ‘white economic empowerment’, as whites became increasingly active in launching their own businesses in such areas as the hospitality industry (restaurants and bed & breakfasts), retail and the information and communications sector (ICT – the South African transition coinciding with a period of explosive growth in this sector). What we do know is that whites still own about half of the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises which operate in the better resourced and more profitable formal sector, whereas black Africans are largely confined to operating in the more crowded informal sector, where profit margins are minimal and few enterprises survive their first two years.36 Complaints about the unfairness to whites of BEE, often portrayed as ‘reverse racism’, feature with regularity in the letters columns of daily newspapers. However, even if BEE has damaged or limited the prospects of individual whites or white-owned firms, the indications are that, overall, all but a relatively small proportion of the white population have maintained or increased their standard of living since 1994. For a start, household incomes in white homes have more than held up, compared with those of the large majority of South Africans: Table 5.2: Annual average household income by race, 1996–2016 (Rand) Year

Black

Coloured

Indian

White

Total

1996 2016 1996–2016

30,460 123,971 307.0%

41,243 226,739 449.8%

89,648 381,303 325.3%

131,504 619,980 371.5%

50,806 189,951 273.9%

Source: IRR, South Africa Survey 2019, p. 435.

36 Bureau for Economic Research, University of Stellenbosch, ‘The Small, Medium and Micro-Enterprise Sector of South Africa’, Research Note 1, 2016 .

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To be fair, it needs to be pointed out that when it comes to per capita income, the white comparative advantage over the other groups has somewhat diminished. Nonetheless, in no way can this be said to be a dramatic collapse in relative advantage: Table 5.3: Annual income per capita by race, 1996–2016 (Rand) Year 1996 2016 1996–2016

Black 6,051 34,477 469.8%

Coloured 8,426 56,392 569.3%

Indian 20,818 113,694 446.1%

White 44,550 226,161 407.7%

Total 10,962 53,754 390.4%

Source: IRR, South Africa Survey 2019, p. 439.

Continuing white advantage also showed up in expenditure trends, a major study indicating that whereas black Africans had an annual median expenditure of only R6,009 in 2006 and R9,186 in 2015, the comparable figures for whites were R77,308 in 2006 and R100,205.37 Although whites might retort that these gross figures obscure the rising costs of living in post-apartheid South Africa, notably the amounts paid out in providing for private security, medical aid and private schooling (or the fees demanded by the better-off public schools situated in historically white areas), these figures suggest that on the whole, white South Africans have been able to maintain their standard of living. Many of the costs they incur are discretionary, enabling them to opt out of state provision, which is generally perceived as being of a considerably lower standard. In 2017, for instance, some 72 per cent of whites belonged to medical aid schemes (which provide access to private medical care). The comparable figures were 10 per cent for black Africans, 20 per cent for Coloureds and 49 per cent for Indian South Africans.38 A further complaint might be that the costs of living (especially of food) have increased rapidly, yet it is of note that inflation levels since 1994 have been relatively modest, kept in relatively strict control by fiscal policy. Headline inflation in 1994 was 9 per cent, and in only two years after that (2002 and 2008) did it exceed that figure. In most years throughout the period 1994–2017, inflation has normally hovered between 5 and 6 per cent. It is notable that one website seeking to attract expatriates to work in the country in 2020 calculated that the cost of 37

Statistics SA, South African Labour and Development Research Unit and Agence Française de Développement, ‘Inequality Trends in South Africa: A Multidimensional Diagnostic of Inequality 2019’, Pretoria: Statistics South Africa, Report 03-10-19. 38 IRR, South Africa Survey 2019, p. 585.

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living in South Africa was cheaper than in 80 per cent of countries in the world.39 More reliably, a quality of life index developed by the Institute of Race Relations, based on ten weighted indicators that are indicative of the quality of life of a person or household, records a score of 7.9 (out of 10) for whites, compared with 5.4 for black Africans, 6.4 for Coloureds and 7.3 for Indians.40 Of course, gross figures flatten out differences, and some whites have done a lot better than others. South Africa has more high-net-worth individuals (40,400 in 2016) and multi-millionaires (2,130) than any other country in Africa. In 2016, the top 1 per cent of income taxpayers, with an income of R780,000 or more, accounted for 12.6 per cent of gross national income. Meanwhile, the richest 0.01 per cent (about 3,500 individuals) had annual incomes of over R7 million, their combined share of income being 1.2 per cent, over a hundred times their share of the population.41 The overwhelming majority of these will be white. As recently demonstrated by journalist Pieter du Toit, a small and cohesive group of Afrikaner capitalists have done extraordinarily well since 1994, and there is no reason to believe that their English-speaking counterparts have fared otherwise. Although du Toit rejects the epithets which label the former a ‘mafia’, he does not deny that they represent ‘an intricate network of a connected and privileged few, a network with access to vast reservoirs of human and financial capital’.42 Yet in absolute terms, they are few in number, and the overwhelming majority of white South Africans remain firmly within what is globally regarded as the ‘middle class’. Despite this conclusion, it is necessary to recognize something of an exception to the general rule of continued white prosperity. This concerns the reappearance of a class of poor whites. Although gross figures suggest something of a decline in the size of the white working class,43 the number of whites of working age who are registered as unemployed has substantially increased. Stats SA records the number of unemployed whites according to the government’s official definition as having risen from 42,000 in 1994 to 148,000 in 2019; by Stats 39 ‘Cost of Living in South Africa – 2020 prices’, undated . 40 IRR, South Africa Survey 2020, p. 426. 41 Ihsaan Bassier and Ingrid Woolard, ‘The Top 1% of Incomes Are Increasing Rapidly Even with Low Economic Growth’, September 2018 . 42 Pieter du Toit, The Stellenbosch Mafia: Inside the Billionaires Club, Johannesburg and Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2019, p. 193. 43 In 2001, some 377,000 whites were recorded as working in what would have been overwhelmingly manual work, namely craft and related trades, plant and machine operation, in ‘elementary’ work, and as domestic workers; by 2018 their number had declined to 271,000. IRR, South Africa Survey 2019, pp. 265–6.

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SA’s expanded definition, the number had risen from 55,000 to 201,000.44 No figures are available, but it may be expected that the large proportion of poor whites is composed of Afrikaners, their numbers swelled by their exclusion from the lower ranks of the public service. This is explored further in Chapter 10. It is clear. The political changes which have swept across South Africa since 1994 have closed off certain opportunities for whites as these have been more equally shared among the population. Most notable is the manner in which public employment has been effectively closed off for all but a tiny proportion of white South Africans. Similarly, whereas whites formerly had privileged access to, for instance, places at university, they are now having to compete with black South Africans. Nonetheless, the indications are that, except perhaps for a small class of poor whites, whites do not have a strong material case for regretting the arrival of democracy in South Africa.

44 IRR, South Africa Survey 2020, pp. 282–3. Stats SA defines the unemployed as not having worked during the relevant survey week, having actively looked for work or having been available for work during the reference week. The expanded definition refers to those without a job who wanted to work and were available to work, regardless of whether they actively looked for a job in the four weeks prior to the reference week.

6 Disillusion and Dystopia More than two decades on from the arrival of democracy, there is much assertion of the increasing racialization of political debate in South Africa. ‘There is a rising cauldron of discontent, driven by race politics’, averred Mzukisi Qobo, a prominent commentator, in 2018. ‘Race reconciliation has lost its currency in our imagination.’ Often this is ascribed to the intemperate tone adopted by exchanges on social media, not least because the ANC’s governance failures, notably during the Zuma years, have emboldened those who have always believed in the hopelessness of black rule in Africa. Yet at the root of all this, it is often argued, is the failure of the democratic transition to lead to a new society, one constructed around a major redistribution of economic power from white to black, and the restoration of dignity to black South Africans, the overwhelming majority of whom have remained on the margins of the economy.1 In contrast, the IRR has argued cheerfully that the fabric of race relations has remained sound. Surveys conducted on its behalf by MarkData in 2015 and 2016 indicated that the majority of black Africans (60 per cent and 59 per cent, respectively) agreed that race relations had improved since 1994 and, interestingly, this was higher than for ‘All South Africans’ (54 per cent and 55 per cent). It also summarized the most salient differences between the outcomes of the 2016 survey with one conducted in 2001 (see Table 6.1), Despite this relatively good news, the IRR conceded that the fabric of race relations was fraying. It, too, pointed to the damage done by hurtful and insulting comments posted on social media by white racists, citing particular instances which had inflamed sentiments in recent years.2 Yet the fundamental message it 1 2

Mzukisi Qobo, ‘The Future of Race Relations in South Africa is Not So Bright’, Daily Maverick, 7 May 2018. See also Christine Qunta, Why We Are Not A Nation, Cape Town, Seriti sa Sechaba Publishers, 2016. Particular infamy attached to comments by estate agent Penny Sparrow, who equated black beach-goers in KwaZulu-Natal to ‘monkeys’; and yet another estate agent, Vicky Momberg, who lashed out at blacks as ‘kaffirs’ (usually relayed as ‘the K word’ and regarded as the ultimate racial insult) and said she would drive over black people and shoot them if she had a gun. Then there was a Vanessa Hartley,

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promoted was that the more the economy faltered and unemployment increased, the easier it would become for politicians to foment racial divisions for political or ideological gain. Table 6.1. Perceived differences in racism between 2001 and 2016, by percentage 2001 Race Relations have improved since 1994: Have no personal experience of racism: Whites should take second place (agree): Talk of racism is from politicians seeking excuses (agree): With more education, jobs, differences between races will disappear (agree): Different races need each other (agree):

2016

All

Black

All

Black

48.0

49.0

54.5

58.7

49.0

46.0

71.9

71.2

50.0

53.0

27.6

28.6

62.0

58.0

49.3

45.9

81.0

82.0

71.4

72.2

91.0

93.0

83.9

83.7

Source: IRR, ‘Race Relations in South Africa – Reasons for Hope 2017: Sound But Fraying at the Edges’, February 2017, https://irr.org.za/reports/occasional-reports/files/race-relationsin-south-africa-2013-reasons-for-hope-2017, accessed 14 May 2021

What both these approaches share is the conviction that relations between white and black are strongly shaped by the performance of the economy. Although black radicals are demanding a major redistribution of power while the IRR has much greater faith in incremental economic growth, both recognize the potentially racially polarizing outcomes of the failure to improve the living conditions of the masses of black South Africans. It is against this background that this and the following chapter explore how white South Africans feel about the changes that have taken place since 1994. In so doing, they seek to complement the ground-breaking work of Melissa Steyn, which, published in 2001, was an early attempt to address ‘White Identity in a Changing South Africa’. In this, while stressing that South Africa’s history had rendered whiteness ‘particularly virile’, she challenged any notion of white homogeneity, and argued instead that there were five different narratives of what who likened blacks to ‘stupid animals’ who should be ‘tied to a rope …’ Sadly, there is no shortage of examples, and likewise, the IRR was also able to cite equally racially offensive statements by black South Africans.

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it meant to be white competing for legitimation among white South Africans.3 These expressed bundles of attitudes which, to simplify her more nuanced discussion, were held by, respectively, white fundamentalists, who were ‘still colonial after all these years’; racial victims, who experienced what had happened to them as ‘reverse racism’; white pragmatists, who, while still regarding whiteness as fundamental to their being, were looking for practical ways to survive; white innocents, who denied that they were implicated by apartheid, de-emphasized group affiliation and claimed that they were colour-blind; and lastly, white Africans, who either agreed that the changes taking place were right but did not know how to negotiate their own personal place in them or, alternatively, sought to avoid confronting their whiteness by appropriating a pastiche blackness or living a life of penance.4 Unsurprisingly, there were to be strong echoes of the attitudes she found expressed in the late 1990s in those expressed by participants in the focus groups conducted twenty years later. These will be discussed at the end of the following chapter. For the moment, the concern is more empirical, simply recording and reflecting upon white respondents’ reactions to the unfolding of events in South Africa since the fall of apartheid. Focus group respondents were invited to discuss their feelings about developments in South Africa since 1994. In particular, they were encouraged to share their expectations and hopes at the time of the transition, and how they thought the reality of democracy had matched up to these. While the views expressed were diverse, there is no doubting the overwhelming sense of disillusion with the outcome of majority rule. Although laced to an extent with nostalgia for apartheid, the more widespread view was that democracy has proved dysfunctional – although there was no clear idea about what alternatives there might be.

Democracy, the impossible choice There was almost unanimous agreement among participants that by the early 1990s a transition to democracy had become inevitable. The balance of forces had become such that the NP was faced with no option but to negotiate the best deal that it could. The NP government had been running ‘a very good country’ on its own, argued one participant, and one which had become self-sufficient. But: I think they would have come to the point where democracy would have to take place. I think due to sanctions. I don’t think de Klerk had a choice. To be honest, it was something he was forced to do. I think it was a big decision he had to make for the interest of the country. (CT northern suburbs, A, middle income, 45–55) 3 4

Steyn, ‘Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used to Be’: White Identity in a Changing South Africa, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2001, p. xxxi. Steyn, ‘Whiteness’, pp. 153–4.

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Unless there had been a transition, remarked another participant expressing a widely held view, there would have been a war. Of course, when democracy had come in 1994, there was an initial outburst of euphoria and excitement in which whites had participated. Yet, as one participant recalled, the high hopes for the future had been hopelessly naïve. At the time, he had enjoyed the mood of the country because it had been incredibly positive. It would have been churlish not to have trusted the promises that the different political parties were making, as they had imparted a strong sense of hope. Yet once the election was done, democracy very quickly began to unravel (Howick, E, high income, 60–9). Democracy was rapidly taken ‘to an extreme’, as the new government simply sought to reverse the problems that apartheid had created ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). The fundamental problem, as expressed by more than a few participants, was that, however inevitable this may have been, the conditions for democracy did not exist. One of the most vocal participants on this point put it this way: I think democracy was the right thing. But I think it was may be a little bit at the wrong time … I do think when they decided freedom for all … there should have been, may be a little bit of a grace period, a learning period … I think there should have been a grace period where Nelson Mandela come free, they sat down and discussed how political parties were going to be running this country. And at the same time start to educate people. Not just the Blacks who were uneducated or less educated, educating the whites on what has been happening. Give everybody the flat out how this country is going to be now. This is how we are going to run it. This is how we are going to look at the future. Instead of just handing it over … (CT northern suburbs, E/A, middle income, 45–55)

Another participant concurred. ‘They’ (meaning ‘the blacks’) had thought it would be easy: You merely turn this thing around and it’s done. They didn’t realise it was a process. (Brandfort, A, upper income, 60–9) I remember FW’s many words about weights and counterweights that would be built in. What happened to that? (Brandfort, A, income unknown, 60–9)

At the same time, whites themselves were likewise not ready for the transition. ‘They did not realise what was happening in our country. They did not realise what they were letting themselves in for’ (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9). Hopes may have been high at the time of transition, but democracy had resulted in hugely disappointed expectations. As it turned out, whites had invested far too heavily in the person of Nelson Mandela, for whom praise was near unanimous.

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I think that was the right time [to move to democracy] and there would have been war if we didn’t. So, it was the right thing to do. But, also, at that time we had Nelson Mandela, who was an amazing person. But the government after that basically messed it up after him. (CT northern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40) He kept his promise. It wasn’t about the money and about the power because he was just president for one term. Then he gave it off. It is the people that came after him that messed up. That was greedy and stealing. He just wanted the dream. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40)

The trope that everything had gone downhill after Mandela was widely shared: What has actually happened was a huge disappointment. For me 1994 I was on cloud nine. I mean you know the whole writing of the constitution and everything that went with it, and that wonderful man, Nelson Mandela was now going to be taking centre stage of the country. And for a man to go through what he went through and come out with no chip on his shoulder, for me that was, wow … And I remember standing in a queue that was miles and miles and miles long. I hate standing in queues. And you know I enjoyed every minute of it … I would put [that day] as a highlight in my life … And my belief was just so strong that it would work. Unfortunately, dear old Mr Mandela was just a little bit too old. I wish he was thirty years younger. (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9) Nelson Mandela had another reason for this country. But those that came after him, while Mr. Thabo Mbeki [was] also in the same section as Mr. Nelson Mandela. But then came Jacob Zuma. And he was actually the fly in the ointment. Because he was the one that sowed corruption, I mean openly … he was the one actually causing the problems in South Africa. And everybody that followed in his footsteps, like his ministers, [inaudible] was corrupt, and the whole of South Africa saw it … he is actually the biggest criminal. (CT northern suburbs, E/A, middle income, 45–55) What has democracy done for South Africa? Just running it into the ground. Other than that it’s done nothing. ( Joburg southern suburbs, E/A, middle income, 45–55)

Much of the problem was that whites have not been valued: I think it is very key to have white people in government and business because I think what we [were] supposed to be doing in the beginning when we did the cross over it was not adequate. The education level was not quick enough. The invitation of BEE was too quick. They didn’t give ample enough time for people to do the skills. So, one of the largest concerns is that there is a lot of skills that white people hold in business today and there is still some value if they transfer their skill like internships. We had apprentices back in the days, those kind of things. So, there is still a

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa thing of handing over skills and development. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40) You did not have a choice, you needed them but when you gave them that power, it went straight to their heads, they put uneducated people in positions they were not trained for, so they disperse power to others just to make them feel powerful … They should have just signed a treaty that stipulated that for generations to come, irrespective of whether they were black or white, these law/rules must apply … The ruling party only thinks of today or tomorrow, not the future, so they are really doing an injustice against our children. (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9) What we wanted was equal. To be equal. And now it is actually changing too much. That we are not equal. The whites are actually going to go down. (CT northern suburbs, E/A, lower income, 45–55)

For some, the unchecked rush for equality was threatening South Africa with the dire fate of its neighbour to the north, of becoming ‘Zimbabwe with our flag over it’: I mean the proof is Zimbabwe. That was the most productive country in the world. And what happened? Everybody that was qualified and know what they were doing got scared and ran. Left the country. And where’s the country today? That is exactly what is happening here. ( Joburg southern suburbs, E/A, middle income, 45–55) Twenty-five later they are running the country into the ground. Worse than Zimbabwe. ( Joburg southern suburbs, A, middle income, 45–55)

Notwithstanding this fearful prospect, there was little idea of what could have replaced democracy. One participant, who frankly disagreed that democracy had been the best outcome in 1994, was simply nonplussed when asked about the possible alternative. ‘That is a very hard question and I can’t answer it’ (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40). Another was equally at a loss. He ‘did not believe in democracy’, as he thought it was ‘inherently flawed’, but he couldn’t think of a better option ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). One participant did concede that ‘democracy has its place and the right to vote should definitely be applied’ but argued there should be various restrictions. Prisoners should be deemed to have forfeited their right to vote, as should those who were not contributing to the country’s tax base (Pietermaritzburg, A, middle income, 30–40). Although this was an outlying view, the large majority of participants were in agreement that, one way or another, democracy in South Africa had simply not worked. Yet as one participant put it: I don’t think you can blame the system. It is the people, we cannot blame democracy for our problems, its people, the ANC which is in power, humanity that causes it … (Bloemfontein, A, middle income, 18–24)

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On the way down: South Africa under the ANC Writing after the 2014 general election, David Everatt reported the emergence of a new narrative about how both South Africa and the ANC had become ‘ineluctably’ destined for ‘junk status’. Dominant in the media and among many academics, this foretold of the ANC’s seemingly unstoppable descent into ‘corruption, cronyism, nepotism, racism and hostility to human rights’. Endless repetition had made the apparent inevitability of South Africa ‘becoming the next Zimbabwe’ not just an assertion but a ‘factoid’ (that is, an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact).5 Everatt further noted that ‘few in the academy (unlike the past) openly admit to any support for the ANC as a party or government’. This is a valuable reminder that criticisms of the ANC come from many different sources, as much radical as liberal and conservative. Nonetheless, especially given the wealth of ammunition provided to onlookers by the billowing of corruption, state capture and the disastrous management of the SOEs during the Zuma years, it is unsurprising that opinions expressed by the mainly middle-­ class whites in the focus groups should echo the media and congregate towards the conservative end of the spectrum. In short, their views on the trajectory of the ANC’s record in government were overwhelmingly condemnatory. ‘It doesn’t matter who you vote for’, explained one participant, but: Nobody is satisfied. Nobody is like getting what they want. Taxpayers feel like they are getting completely drained. The unemployed don’t have any work. The people who are affected by crime don’t see criminals getting locked up. Everybody participates but nobody is satisfied. And I think that comes down to that the ANC being a party of liberation and not a party. A party of governance. I mean you give freedom fighters very high powered jobs in government they don’t succeed and they have been incredibly unsuccessful … For whatever reason we are looking at people who are probably in many places worse off. Worse off in empirical terms, in actual terms, but also way off than they expected to be because … some of the money is being stolen through corruption so they have not been delivering. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40)

White people who voted for the ANC in 1994 now see that the party is not running the country in the way it had promised, and have accordingly changed their minds and gone back to their roots. Before 1994, the country was: Just being run better, money was handled better. It’s not necessarily about white people were more favoured. I think it’s more just about how the actual country’s being run. ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24) 5

David Everatt, ‘The Era of Ineluctability? Post-Apartheid South Africa after 20 Years of Democratic Elections’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 42, 1, 2016, pp. 49–64.

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A common theme was the decline in public infrastructure since 1994: The ANC being post twenty five years [post-]apartheid plus and just the way I’ve seen things go downhill. Being born in Grey’s Hospital which was a phenomenal hospital. It was, pride and joy and everything and not so long ago my friend went there and waited in queues. Things don’t get done. They don’t have medication. They’re running out of just normal vaccinations the children require, that they don’t have government stock of. Which is, every single child deserves to have their immunization when its needed but they can’t get it because government can’t supply it. (Pietermaritzburg, E, upper income, 18–28) Recently, after a long time, I went to Bloemfontein, wow, if you see how that place has gone down, if you consider that it used to be the ‘city of roses’, you don’t see that anymore, you see what the islands [in the roads], what they look like, it looks like a jungle growing on the sidewalks and islands, everything has gone down, not just Bloemfontein, you can visit any town and see how things have deteriorated. The municipalities just don’t do anything about it. They receive huge salaries. (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9) The basic deterioration of the town. Brandfort used to be one of the prettiest towns in the Free State, one of the few with all its streets tarred, now there is just this immense deterioration that saddens one. Nothing gets done about it. (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9)

Where the DA was in charge – where, basically, whites were still running the show – things are much better: I compare the Western Cape with the rest of the country. All the provinces [sic] in the Western Cape where the DA is in control it’s a totally different picture. When you go over the mountain at Oudtshoorn, and get to George, Mossel Bay, in that vicinity, you immediately see the change in the landscape, so to speak, the infrastructure is better, it is well maintained. I do not know about the Cape, I never go there. Compared to the other provinces where I go, all you see is deterioration, in every little town you only see deterioration. (Brandfort, A, upper income, 60–9) The DA’s infrastructure is fairly good. I mean it is really good. Yes, there are shortfalls, a lot of shortfalls everywhere but go to for example, to East London and have a look at them. Go to Johannesburg. It is a disaster. There should have been budgets to repair the roads where it was never done … (CT northern suburbs, E, upper income, 45–55)

The perceived reasons for all this were many. Corruption in tender processes in government and at SOEs was one; the ANC having fostered a culture of entitlement among its followers was another; there was also land-grabbing and bribery, and there were loopholes in every law for wrongdoers to exploit; and black people got appointed to jobs for which they were not qualified while quali-

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fied whites were overlooked. Ministers were well paid while poor people starved. Meanwhile, the unions had become too powerful, too militaristic and militant, with the result that investment was pulling out of the country. One participant summed it all up: ‘Our government doesn’t know what they are doing’ (CT southern suburbs, language group and income level unclear, 45–55). Another added: ‘the people that run this country are the stupidest [inaudible] that I ever came across’ (CT southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40). Put another way, South Africa has simply become ‘a zoo’ (Bloemfontein, A, middle income, 18–24). However, if any two causes of the country’s decline had to be singled out, they were the unfair treatment now being dished out to whites (reverse racism) and the increase in crime and violence.

‘Reverse racism’ and the end of reconciliation No issue aroused such emotion as the perceived unfairness to whites of government policies designed to directly tackle the historical legacy of black disadvantage. In particular, BEE (into which employment equity was conversationally subsumed) was projected as having resulted in systematic unfairness to whites in the labour market, threatening their livelihoods, curtailing their prospects and forcing those with qualifications to look for jobs overseas. Although some participants acknowledged that some intervention like BEE might have been needed, it was viewed by the majority as having brought the era of racial reconciliation to an end. It was now whites who were the victims of a ‘reverse racism’. One participant made a valiant defence of the constitution as having defended the rights of minorities, noting that an overwhelming majority in parliament was needed to change the Bill of Rights ( Joburg southern suburbs, upper income, 18–24). Others challenged any view of South Africa as a country of minorities, one mentioning that her views matched those of her black and Coloured counterparts – they wanted the same things, and shared the same frustrations (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40). Another prioritized class over race, arguing that people from similar ‘economic groupings’ would forge similar views, whatever their colour. However, the more favoured perspective was that however wonderful the constitution was on paper, it had failed to defend the rights of minorities, and especially those of whites. This was attributed in part to the nature of democracy: [This] ensures that the minority rights are overlooked. It’s about what the majority want and they get their way, the minority deals with it. So, I mean, to make that argument, I don’t believe in any other democracy whether you are a white minority in South Africa, whether you’re the black minority in the US. Whenever you’re a minority you will be marginalized in a democracy and that’s just the way it is. ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24)

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An even more fatalistic participant regarded constitutional protections as simply unable to cope with the reality that society was composed of a multiplicity of minorities: I think they like the façade of, you know, everything is always made out to be, it’s about everybody but it’s really not … we’ve got all the different tribes and stuff in South Africa. We’ve the Zulu and the Xhosas and you know the Sothos or whatever, I would say there’s even sort of animosity between them … we think of black people as all one big group but [they] actually aren’t, and I think between them as well they don’t necessarily have each other’s interest at heart … (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40)

This fed into the view that those charged with implementing the constitution were confronted by an impossible job: Yes, the constitution [does protect minority rights]. The paper is doing the job. It is the people making decisions behind the paper that is not doing the job. I sat in that equality court case with the Afrikaner, the artist that did that thing that says ‘fuck Afrikaans’. And the ‘tit for tat’ frightened me big time and what I came to realize is that the magistrate who sits there has to make a decision got a very difficult thing to do because with one point this group is feeling we are now being treated unequally. And the other point is freedom of speech. And now he has to balance all of these things to the end. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40)

It was no wonder that the racial minorities – Coloureds and Indians as well as whites – were getting ‘shafted’. The constitution was unable to protect them. They did not have the numbers, they were not being listened to and they were consistently being overruled. It was simultaneously that the rights laid down in the constitution were not being implemented and that minorities were being rendered powerless within a democracy: With reference to voting, something to me that’s very unfair is how many whites there are, and how many are they? There is no way from today to a 1000 years that we will win a vote. Yes, that’s probably 30 or 40 to 1 of us. How do you vote against that majority. It’s so unfair. The other parties have no chance against the ANC. (Brandfort, A, lower income, 60–9) I think they give far more to the majority … the government does not dispense the state resources, equally. Democratically we are all equal, but we aren’t and they just further disadvantage us, the whites. (Brandfort, A, income level uncertain, 60–9)

South Africa, argued one participant, can only progress if the different races agree to live and work alongside against other, but ‘the hatred will never disappear’ (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9). Another feared that BEE had worked to fuel white hypocrisy, citing an individual he knew who owned a

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mining company, and who in public was polite and friendly to his black business partner yet in private ‘was the most racist individual you could possibly imagine’ (Pietermaritzburg, Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). This gloomy perspective was endorsed by another who, although she prayed that reconciliation could be achieved, did not believe that South Africans had the right ‘mind-set’: Do I believe we live up to that rainbow nation? Not at all. I don’t believe that because we have so much hate. I look at the Zulus fighting against the Zimbabweans … And everyone says South Africa is another Zimbabwe. It’s gonna be like that, it’s gonna turn like that … but I do believe that apartheid is not actually, apartheid in 1994. Before it was abolished in 1994, I do believe that was a colour thing. But I do believe now with the xenophobia it is black on black. So, you know they are still the same race so what is it? For me, that’s, that’s where I get confused. (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40)

For some participants, hatred between the races was being perpetuated by blacks continuing to ‘dredge up the past’. While it was freely admitted that whites were, on the whole, reluctant to talk about the past, it was also argued that changes to the school curriculum were provoking further division: I don’t condone what happened but I do believe that it created a separation among the people and a lot of anger. And it has become very hateful, you know, you know, the text-books that you read. (Pietermaritzburg, A, middle income, 30–40)

According to another participant, the continual ‘harping’ on about apartheid was encouraging a particular vindictiveness among young blacks. She had had clients who were apartheid activists. They were now elderly, but they had had a dream for South Africa, and were aware of how much things had improved. Were the younger generation to listen to them, ‘they might be filled with more grace and love’. There was therefore an urgent need for South Africans to go back to their elders for their guidance, because at the moment ‘we have this mass of young people with no knowledge of what it was really like trying to fight a fight that they don’t understand’ (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40). Another was less reflective: ‘It’s the young blacks who make you out to be a racist, then they come with their apartheid nonsense’ (Bloemfontein, S, middle income, 18–24). They were spurred on by those looking for political gain: When politicians are fighting for votes everything then goes to, well, apartheid it was this. We fought for your power. We fought for the rights. But there’s no learning … They are just fighting for points and votes. (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40)

As a result, whites are no longer granted any respect. Many now felt they had ‘to tip toe around what they say around black people’ ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). This was particularly resented by younger participants.

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Yes, it’s almost like we are classified to say whether our parents are and our grandparents … [were] actually in the apartheid, and part of the apartheid, and if we make a comment, not necessarily racist, it’s always, like the topic of apartheid and no you’re just being racist, it’s because I am black or whatever, always comes up. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a racist comment that you made yourself and we are almost expected to answer questions that are asked of us as if we were responsible which, we’re not. ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24)

As different participants were to express it, the cards were now systematically stacked against whites. ‘We’re being punished more for what happened in the past’ ( Joburg southern suburbs, E/A, upper income, 45–55). ‘Punishing generation after generation after generation’ ( Joburg southern suburbs, middle income, 45–55). It was simply unfair: If I go now as a white person and say that guy called me a Boer, what happens to him. They blow you out of the water. But if I call him the ‘K’ word now, I am in prison ten minutes later. ( Joburg southern suburbs, A, middle income, 45–55)

Somewhere along the line, stated one participant, ‘you have to stop labelling me as this white, white privileged person’. It was whites who were now being disadvantaged: BEE has been effective in providing more black people with jobs [but] it’s almost taken out the majority of the white people who were in the workplace. It’s taken out their jobs. ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24) I don’t begrudge him his work, I’m not a racist. I don’t have much love for him, but I’m not a racist … We must give him employment but our people and our children must sit with folded hands. There’s no work for us. (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9) I know a policeman that was thirty-six years in the police. He had to get promotion. One of these darkies comes in – Whoops! He gets the job. Just out of school. With more salary than that man had thirty-six years worked for the government. (CT northern suburbs, A, lower income, 45–55) The other thing is when they advertise a position and say if you are not white, then don’t even apply, how is that not racist? You cannot just say that it is because there is BEE that you are fine. (Bloemfontein, A, middle income, 18–24) No, no, he stayed [rather than take a retrenchment package] but he had to get demoted. Demoted in every way. Stocks, everything. So, I am not sure if that happened to a lot of white people as well. They just moved down. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40)

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I know a nurse. She was a nurse at Groote Schuur for I think it was twenty-­ five years. And a student at the age of twenty-nine just finished her course, and she came, it was between this lady that had twenty-five years and the young student and the student got the job. And she had to be retrenched yes, but not the biggest package ever. And today she is a cleaner. (CT northern suburbs, E/A, lower income, 45–55)

In addition, resentments centred around perceptions of schooling options and opportunities being closed off to young whites. Two mothers complained: My daughter must go next year to High School. I can’t find a school for my child. So, she was on the government board, they gave me a school I can send her to, Elsies River High School. My daughter has blue eyes, blond hair. Ravensmead. That is a zone that you don’t want to go into. And then there are names on the list I cannot even pronounce. So where must I take my daughter to? … So, for white South Africans it is very difficult. It leaves us with a bleak future for our children. (CT southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40) My son is sixteen years old but he hasn’t been in school for two years because I also don’t get a school for him. He needs to go to a school for skills. So, they also said to me I must take him to Bishop Lavis.6 He can go to school there. (CT southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40)

A young Free Stater registered his own sense of disempowerment: In days gone by, our parents married at 22 and had children at 23, they had a job, a house, but look at us, almost 24, still studying, battling to find employment, you can’t marry because there is no money, where can you still buy a house, you battle to survive. If you don’t have parents backing you, how will you get somewhere in life? They did not need their parents then. As an example, for the university, next year is my practical year and we need to work, many of the students go and work at … the experimental farm, there is accommodation and they live there for free, they don’t even need books for the year but they still claim their accommodation money, R2000 or R3000 a month, they still get their money for books. Even in their theory year they do the same, they claim for books but then download the books on their phones. They just get and get. (Bloemfontein, A, middle income, 18–24)

So, it went on. Many feel that blacks are now the ones who are on top, their advantage promoted by the ANC which promises them anything and everything; it’s ‘Free this, free that’, and if they can’t manage to keep their promises, they simply blame apartheid. So, everything is now apartheid’s fault. So now who gets, who gets free university? The blacks get free university. Who gets free houses? The blacks get 6

A historically Coloured area, notorious for its high level of violent crime and murders.

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa free houses. But they are still not happy. Who’s the guys burning down the universities? It is the guys who are failing and they don’t get a bursary again for free … ( Joburg southern suburbs, E/A, middle income, 45–55) Our location too, all the locations have these new TVs. The whites didn’t get anything. New solar geysers too. They get solar geysers. (Brandfort, A, lower income, 60–9)

Some believed it was no wonder, against this catalogue of injury and injustice, that whites were having to look abroad for work: Equal work creation? That’s why all the people are emigrating elsewhere because they can simply not find employment. If you do find employment, you also don’t receive the proper remuneration. (Brandfort, A, upper income, 60–9)

The reappearance of poor whites The consequence of this new form of racial injustice was the growth of poverty among whites. This was evidenced in different ways. Increasingly, lack of work meant that older whites were having to live on their state pensions. ‘We don’t have the luxury of leaving our children with grandparents’ (like many black workers) commented one participant: Because at 65 many of our parents are still working, very few people can retire. Very few people can say at 65 that they can retire, many have cancelled their medical aids because they cannot survive on the pension. (Bloemfontein, A, middle income, 18–24)

They are the lucky ones, because in many places a class of poor whites is now becoming increasingly visible. Lack of work has resulted in some whites having to take the lowest paid forms of employment: We’ve even got white garage attendants now because there’s no more work. They’re grabbing anything that they can get hold of. Where we stay we’ve even got a white guy on the skip ways truck. Every Thursday, he jumps off, he runs, fetches a dustbin. ( Joburg southern suburbs, A, middle income, 45–55) The lower class people that didn’t have the money, nice education … they are collecting trash along the roads. They make a living out of that. The other ones who can’t make a living like that, who doesn’t want to do a living, they stay on the streets. ( Joburg southern suburbs, E/A, middle income, 45–55)

Many of those who were retrenched as a result of BEE were rapidly thrust downwards. In ‘the old Transvaal’ (Gauteng), they had had bonds on their houses, but now they were no longer able to service them and the banks repossessed them. Today they:

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Live in caravans next to the dams and next to the river … I don’t know, some of them sell drugs for life and some of them teach their children to become, the girls, to become prostitutes and the boys become people who sell drugs. They live in caravan parks. I haven’t seen that happen in Western Cape yet but in the Transvaal especially where all the coal mines were. All the white people used to work in at the coal mines. They replaced those former white people with black people to work in the mines. Around 400 000 of those, mostly Afrikaans-speaking white people lives in caravan parks and become drug dealers and prostitutes. (CT southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40)

Other participants remarked upon the number of white beggars on the streets: White beggars are getting rife especially in Maritzburg … I can’t speak for what they’ve been through and a lot of them go straight on to drugs. They can’t cope. They just can’t cope so they get addicted to drugs … And once you get hooked on it there is nothing you can do. Then you are finished. But I can’t say, you can’t say what they have been through, and Ja, I think it disheartens them a lot. (Pietermaritzburg, A, middle income, 30–40)

Before 1994, you would not find a white squatter camp anywhere in the country, but now they were cropping up in numerous places – in Krugersdorp, Pretoria, Brakpan and Boksburg and elsewhere: Black people say they are battling. They haven’t got water. They haven’t got toilets. Get in your car. Go, drive from the East Rand via the south to West Rand and go see what is a white squatter camp with no water, with nothing whatsoever. Whatever help they get, people collect and they go then and say here’s food for the children or here is water. ( Joburg southern suburbs, A, middle income, 45–55)

It was all very well for politicians like the EFF’s leader, Julius Malema, to continually make racially charged comments about whites, but now he should see how they struggle. ‘Then he will actually change his own mind and say sorry for what I have said’ (CT northern suburbs, E/A, lower income, 45–55).

Fear, crime and violence For many of those who participated in the focus groups, having to live in fear was central to their whiteness. Their fear was palpable as they expressed their sense of everyday life as inherently dangerous. It was acknowledged that South Africans from every background were adversely affected by crime. Nonetheless, many participants felt that, as whites, they were at particular risk of violation, of their bodies and their properties being selected as targets for crime. For most, it was taken as given that crime had increased alongside democracy. Like I say, twenty years [ago] you still felt free to go wherever you wanted to. Nowadays you need to lock yourself in. Whenever you go out at night-time

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa you need to be a couple of people together so you can protect yourself from the bad hands that is going to come your way. (CT northern suburbs, E/A, lower income, 45–55)

Assertions that crime was getting worse were combined with a measured nostalgia for apartheid. He would not want to go back to apartheid, remarked one participant. Indeed, he viewed today’s high level of crime as a product of its social injustices. But today’s government was not doing anything to tackle the problem. As a result: You are afraid to drive. You might get hi-jacked or murdered or whatever. I won’t go back … but what happened previously … there was law and order. (CT southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40)

Similar sentiments were expressed by others: Oh yes, it was nice living. Whites on the one side, blacks on the other side. We could sleep open doors, open windows. Today you can’t. We have hedges in the front garden. They climb up … If they want to come in, they come in. It’s difficult now, more difficult now to live. But in my community where I live in the Parow area,7 when I was young we used to walk the streets at night and now you can’t do it at all. There is a lot of people sleeping around anywhere. And that is another thing that I think we never used to have. People homeless, sleeping anywhere, breaking in, watching your house. You can’t trust anyone. That is the problem that we have. (CT southern suburbs, A, lower income, 30–40) It wasn’t quite like this in the apartheid years. It is far worse … Yes, it is reverse. We are suffering more now than in during that time. In the apartheid years. It is, if you think about it, it is absolutely ridiculous … Getting murdered, killed because you are a white. ( Joburg southern suburbs, E/A, 45–55)

Some participants lived in constant fear. Asked whether he was comfortable living in South Africa, one participant replied: No, I am totally terrified. Each time I have to use public transport … trains, taxis. I have a driver’s license. I used to have a car. Even if I am driving in my car there [are] people who’s going to break the window or hi-jack me because of my skin colour. I have a Coloured niece. If I want to visit her Mitchell’s Plain and take the nine-five train … they want to shout at me. They want to threaten me. Each day I live in a prison fearing that – I cannot live in a prison. (CT southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40)

A female participant elaborated about how crime rendered women’s lives particularly dangerous: 7

Parow is a country town some twenty kilometres outside Cape Town.

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Violence. It’s the violent crime. It’s the violence for me … I just, I just feel I, I am not safe walking in town, where I used to go to in Church Street with my mom to the Ashmal’s, just to talk about one shop … now we wouldn’t even dare to go as two white females into town because we are a minority and if something had to happen, which has happened before … No-one would help us because they are also scared. The black women that I know, my friends, are scared. They don’t even want to walk to work because they leave at four a.m. in the morning, it’s still dark. They leave from the township, they come, they now have had to fork out more money to have a transport that would now fetch them right outside their homes because they are scared. So, I don’t even think only as a white woman, I say white women, it’s now gender-based, but as women we are inferior and we are not, I don’t feel safe. (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40)

Another female participant agreed that the dangers were even greater for black women. Although she was not complacent, she felt that if anybody is going to get raped on their way to work, I think we are very much in the minority because a lot of black women are treated a lot worse than we are. (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40)

Against this background, many participants expressed a sense of being besieged: It’s just the crime that is getting out of hand. So, you feel unsafe. In the past your home was yours, you didn’t worry about crime. These days it is as if you live in a prison. (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9) You have to sleep with cameras and alarms. I have been overseas and I stayed in a hotel, slept with my door open, woke up, and all my personal belongings were still there, you don’t have to worry about it. Definitely uneasy, 5-10 years ago on the farm, you didn’t have to lock the bakkies, you could leave the keys in, now you can’t do it anymore, you have to get a security patrol. (Bloemfontein, A, income level uncertain, 18–24)

Explanations for the high level of crime were diverse and overlapping. Three were given particular prominence. The first was a widely perceived decline in social cohesion and morality. This revolved around the widely felt notion that South Africa was ‘going to the dogs’. For the most conservative participants, this was due to the decline of religion (one declared bluntly that ‘they’ were not Christians), but more widely it was felt that there was a collapse of discipline among the young because of problems in the schools and a lack of respect for teachers and adults: You know in apartheid years you were taught if an adult or somebody with authority speaks to you, you listen and respect what that people is telling you … Today a child in grade three or four stabs his friend. We never had that, sorry for the French, shit in apartheid. We have it now. Why? Because our children ha[ve] been brought up ‘you can tell an adult, you can say to

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa someone in authority, you can’t touch me because the law protects me’. That is bull dust. ( Joburg southern suburbs, A, middle income, 45–55)

This stood in sharp contrast to better days in the past: Because the children were educated, they knew in the evening to pray to Jesus, today also there’s nothing like that, no more religion in the schools. If you do not have religion in your home, your children will know nothing about it. (Brandfort, A, lower income, 60–9)

The second issue deemed responsible for greater crime was the government’s alleged lack of will and capacity to contain it. Central to this was poor policing (‘nothing gets done’), often ascribed to corruption, yet above all participants bewailed a lack of accountability of those in power, especially when it came to the issues of protecting and prosecuting whites. One participant acknowledged that the political regime was in place to safeguard the rights of minorities but argued ‘there was no political drive’ to do so ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). This easily translated into the complaint that the authorities were more zealous in prosecuting whites for crimes than they were in pursuing blacks, often for more grievous offences: The white, the white South Africans at the moment, we are getting prosecuted just for about everything whereas you can say, how can I say, rest of the nation they can get away. I mean I’ve seen on the news the last couple of days people have been getting murdered and people getting off scot-free because people don’t know how to do their work anymore … (Pietermaritzburg, A, medium income, 30–40) If you look at the state capture, Jacob Zuma literally hasn’t been held accountable for any of the seven hundred and something counts that he has against him. Whereas if you look at Penny Sparrow who was a racist, and who had said a racist word, and she got a sentence against her. So, for saying something and for physically doing something, or raping someone, there’s no justification to that being fair. (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40)

Alongside this shared sense of unfairness to whites, a third reason for rising crime was incitement to violence by politicians. Slogans such as ‘Kill the Boer, kill the farmers’, associated with politicians like Julius Malema, were described as fuelling racial hatred. Failure by the authorities to stamp down on extremist rhetoric only heightened the sense of white victimhood. A few anguished participants called for the implementation of harsh measures. There were a number of calls for the restoration of the death penalty, and one even called for military intervention, stating that if the likes of ‘Eugene de Kock and his boys’ were put in charge of the army for three years, ‘you won’t know this country’ ( Joburg southern suburbs). More constructively, one participant observed:

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We are experiencing a fear of unrest. Because unless we satisfy the aspirations of a country where probably 50 per cent of the population is, certainly under the age of 30, we are going to be in serious trouble. The economy is not going to grow but the population will certainly continue to grow. There is going to be more people without things. We actually have to create a black middle class in this country as quickly as possible. And there had to be some kind of social engineering to do it. And one of the ways was to put money into creating a black middle class and also promoting black people who showed some vestige of ability into jobs so we would accelerate that process … It is a mechanism of trying to create a buffer against the unsatisfied poor. (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9)

This comment suggested that while there is extensive disillusionment with democracy among white South Africans, this sits alongside a more hopeful and optimistic narrative about both present and future. As will be argued at the end of the following chapter, this suggests that Melissa Steyn’s five narratives, far from being discrete, flow into one another, and back and forth. However contradictory they may be, they co-exist alongside each other, perhaps within the whiteness of the same persons.

7 Staying Put and Getting on with Life In 2009, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) granted asylum to Brandon Huntley, a white South African, finding that he ‘had a well-grounded fear of persecution on the grounds of his race’, adding that the South African government displayed ‘indifference, or inability or unwillingness … to protect white South Africans from persecution by African South Africans’. The South African government reacted by warning the Canadian government that the decision could damage relations between the two countries. Politicians, newspapers and talk radio in South Africa were near unanimous in pillorying the IRB’s decision, with Huntley becoming the butt of mockery among both black and white.1 Deeply embarrassed, the Canadian government sent the case back to the IRB for another look; the IRB now concluded that Huntley was not, in fact, in need of protection; and when eventually his appeal against that judgement reached the Federal Court of Canada, it was dismissed, and he was given thirty days to leave the country. While the court recognized that there were genuine human rights concerns in South Africa, it concluded that the evidence did not point to the generalized oppression of whites.2 Three years later, the court turned down a similar bid for refugee status by a white South African family, the Endres, the Canadian government having argued that their claims of persecution on account of their being white and Afrikaans were based upon ‘patently unreliable racist propaganda’.3 1 2

3

‘South Africa’s New Comedy Hero’, Globe and Mail, 5 September 2009 . ‘White South African’s Battle for Refugee Status in Canada ended by Appeals Court’, National Post, 19 June 2014 . ‘White South African Family’s Refugee Bid Rejected, Accused of Boosting Case with “Racist Propaganda”’, National Post, 19 September 2017 .

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Notwithstanding the absurdity of these bids for asylum, there were many suggestions that white South Africans were fleeing the country in alarming numbers. In 2017, a manager at an agency assisting emigrants claimed that the exodus of South Africans in 2018 would break records. He spoke of whites’ concerns around safety and security, education, the weak currency, lack of job opportunities and ‘of course’ the ‘political instability’, and lamented an alarming brain drain of ‘doctors, engineers, our finance industry, our lawyers’, all of whom were high earners and high taxpayers.4 Most would have been heading for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, many resettling through family ties and historical origins and often moving to particular localities inhabited by other South Africans. Critics rebut tales of accelerating white flight. While they register concern about the loss of highly qualified South Africans, they parry ‘the hysteria’ at the heart of much urban myth. Yes, a not insignificant number of whites are leaving the country, and this almost certainly reflects the poor state of the economy. However, perspective is needed, as similarly talented individuals are likewise leaving countries like India and China to pursue opportunities and a better life elsewhere. In any case, very few South Africans had had the ability to emigrate before 1994, and the rise in emigration rates since then should in part be seen as a normalization of historically low migration rates.5 A valuable analysis by David Buckham confirms the need for reliable data. It notes that there is no official record of emigration and that consequently accurate statistics need to be compiled from different sources, all of which have their limitations. Careful dissection of these suggests that an average of 23,000 whites are leaving South Africa per year, and that the number of South African-born persons living outside South Africa increased from around 330,000 in 1990 to some 900,000 in 2017.6 Nonetheless, there is no clear indication that the rate of emigration is accelerating, nor that the white population is shrinking. Although the data indicates that the proportion of whites in the total population has diminished over time, from 11.7 per cent in 1991 to 8.1 per cent in 2016, the number of whites has slightly increased from 4.43 million in 1996 to 4.51 million 4 Tax Consulting South Africa, 2018 . 5 Johan Fourie, ‘Why South Africans Are Emigrating and What to Do About It’, finweek, 20 June 2019 . 6 David Buckham, ‘Are Skilled, White South Africans Really Emigrating at an Accelerating Rate?’, Daily Maverick, 1 October 2019 . The three main sources upon whose data he builds his argument are Stats SA, the UN International Migration Stock database and the national statistics offices of foreign nations.

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in 2016.7 Buckham concludes by condemning ‘the strongly embedded negativity that skews our perceptions of the realities in South Africa’.8 The previous chapter gave insight into this negativity, despite the evidence that the large majority of whites have maintained what most black South Africans would regard as an enviable standard of living. While it might be easy to dismiss the bleak view of life that many whites appear to hold as merely reactionary and racist, it may be more constructive to accept that whites have had to come a long way since 1994, and that for many, this has apparently been a difficult period of adjustment to a fate which was much feared before the transition to democracy. Yet adjust to democracy is what the white population has had to do, and this chapter explores how whites have done it and how, despite their concerns, they have accepted the need to get on with their lives. If the previous chapter is about the negative, this present chapter explores a more positive way in which white South Africans view their lives and their country today.

Flight or fortitude? Going or staying? Emigration is not a realistic prospect for the large majority of white South Africans. Even if they want to leave the country for good, they simply don’t have the option to do so. Those who do manage to emigrate not only have to have the skills and the profile that would-be destination countries want, but they usually have to find jobs before they can leave, negotiate interminable bureaucracy and possess the financial wherewithal to withstand a difficult entry period once they arrive.9 They also have to confront the emotional trauma of leaving family, friends and the familiar for a life abroad, usually in less welcoming climates. South Africa’s ‘a lovely place, lots of sunshine’, proclaimed one participant in the focus groups, contrasting it with her notion of constant rain and gloom in England. They may daydream, but most whites are seemingly realistic in appreciating that South Africa is where they live, where they will continue to live and, in all probability, where they will see out their days. When asked where they were likely to go if they did leave the country, one participant quipped ‘to the graveyard!’ – which tells us something about the mordant character of a certain style of white humour. Participants lamented the permanent departure of those with skills, ‘the 7 IRR, South Africa Survey 2020, pp. 2–3. 8 Buckham, ‘Are Skilled, White South Africans’. 9 The outward flow includes an increasing number (3,000 over the ten years until 2019) of high-net-worth individuals who own assets of US$1 million or more. Note, however, that only just over a half of these are white. AfrAsiaBank: South Africa Wealth Report 2019 .

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people we need to keep the country going’, but highlighted the better pay they could earn overseas, the free healthcare that was often available and the greater safety that the most favoured destination countries could offer. Older participants who had no intention of leaving the country were nonetheless supportive of their children and grandchildren emigrating if that was what they wanted to do, even though this would break up their families and lead to considerable heartbreak. Yet what was remarkable was that, despite all the negativity, the focus groups recorded an overwhelming desire to stay in South Africa. True, there were those who indicated that they would leave if they could, and there were those who simply bluntly stated that they were ‘stuck here’ and lacked the possibility of leaving. A handful cited mercenary motivations. One participant stated that he was actually leaving the country, not because he wanted to do so, but because of the job opportunity on offer, but he was eager to say that he was optimistic about the future of South Africa (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40). Another stated that he would ‘go where the money is’ (CT northern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40), only to be met by a refrain of voices declaring ‘money is not everything’. Another who was in the process of emigrating stated that he ‘would love to live in the Cape’, but that he wouldn’t have the opportunities he was about to get in Canada (Bloemfontein, other details unknown). Nonetheless, for most, South Africa was home, a sentiment expressed most simply by one participant in the Brandfort group: My roots are here, they won’t get me out of my country … If there is a chop and a beer I am fine. (Brandfort, A, income group unknown, 60–9)

A small number of participants volunteered that they possessed dual citizenship and admitted that if the going in South Africa got too hot, there would be no impediment to their leaving. But as one such participant insisted: My heart is in South Africa. I will stay here as long [as I can] and I will fight for the country. And that is what all South Africans should do. The problem was most people just ran away to Australia. They are failing. You need to stand up for your country … We need our disagreements. We need to use the democracy and use it wisely. Fight against crime. Do something about it. You can’t just sit back and complain. (CT, northern suburbs, unknown language group and income, 45–55)

Another participant holding a Greek passport stated passionately that too many South Africans were quick to say that the grass was greener on the other side of the world, ‘but there are bad things everywhere’. She believed that corruption is an issue across the globe, even though ‘it’s really in our face’ in South Africa. Nonetheless, she was ‘someone who really believes in this country’: I love South Africa … I can study abroad. I can live there. I have the opportunity to do so. But there’s just something about South Africa that always brings me back. ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, middle income, 18–24)

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Others proclaimed a wish to travel, see the world and earn money overseas, yet expressed the intention to return home: I will probably move but just to gain experience or to pursue or progress my career. Like for the degree that I want to go into, South Africa doesn’t offer it here so I have to go overseas to study. But I would come back because I love the weather [laughter]. And I’ve travelled. I have gone to different places and I do love the culture of other countries, but there is this thing about home, you know, that brings you back. ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24)

Many praised South Africa when the alternatives were considered. One had worked and lived in Europe but found life unacceptably expensive and had been shocked by the number of white people living in poverty, ‘living on balconies, living underneath the train station’ (CT, northern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40). Another had a friend who lived in one of the most beautiful parts of Italy but was too scared to go out at night (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9). Another whose family came from Peru could easily move there but had no intention of doing so, as she loved living in South Africa ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). Another waxed eloquent in comparing South Africa to the United States: Well, I am staying. There are family and friends. I love the people that are here. I feel like in other countries there are also major issues of race especially in America. There’s pros and cons to wherever you live. I know the crime here is really bad, but I also think that apartheid wasn’t that long ago and I think we have come very far since then. If I am comparing it to America, we have come very far. Their apartheid was like many more years ago and they are still struggling but I think we have come together in many ways … I mean, we stand together in the important times like when we need to be together. And I mean it’s so beautiful here. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 45–55)

Another concurred: From the point of view [of] quality of life we are way ahead of anywhere else in the world. I mean, the people are stunning, Black and white, if you want to put colour into it. It is a great place to live and I am happy. (Howick, other details unavailable)

Overall, there was an appreciation of the importance of keeping perspective. As one participant put it, ‘Let’s set our own goals because this is not Europe’ (CT southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40). When it came to the crunch, for many if not most participants, life in South Africa was viewed as offering a comparative advantage.

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Yes, we can! White privileges and advantages Alongside all their complaints, there was a counter-narrative of positivity about being white. One participant confronted the issue bluntly. There was ‘a massive economic advantage in being white’ because white people had maintained their access to high level and high-paying jobs ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). Another admitted to having a life that was ‘exceptionally comfortable’ (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9). Yet another, while conceding that things were bad, asserted that ‘they are not nearly as bad as what we think and we fear’ (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40). His point was put more explicitly in another group, where it was asked: ‘where have we been prejudiced by the fact that South Africa has become a democratic nation?’: Have any of us been kicked out of our jobs? Barred from getting a job? … I mean, where have we suffered or not met our potential individually since ’94? … The fact is I have not suffered … I don’t think I have suffered in any way… apart from the fact there’s a general level of security that makes me nervous on a personal level … (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9)

This last statement ran counter to complaints about BEE and responded to these by arguing that whites had had to learn to stand on their own feet. It was admitted that to an extent this depended upon the position from which they started: I think the upper class that were maybe the CEO of a company or in a good position I think a lot of people started their own businesses and built up their own in the private sector. So I think there is a majority that is in that sector. But I think it depends because we are middle class, lower class. So, it affects every class differently – where they work, what retrenchment package they got. But … [some people] have made it big and they are creating their own, you know, and they are doing well. I mean they have the resources, the experience. (CT northern suburbs, A, middle income, 45–55)

Class apart, the message that the more optimistic participants spelt out was that much depended upon determination, hard work and a spirit of can-do: Despite the pro-black economic policies that favour the majority, there are still a lot of white people in South Africa who do well … because they work hard as individuals or … help each other. They work as individuals, they usually have their own businesses. Family businesses. Businesses they have [now] had for a long time. (CT northern suburbs, A, middle income, 45–55)

The argument continued that although many such individuals might have offshore investments, they succeed because of their sense of responsibility and the attention they give to management; above all, however, their success is due to motivation.

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Making a success of life was a matter of grabbing opportunities: ‘you actually need to go out there and you actually need to seek out opportunities’ averred one small business owner, who laid claim ‘to some very nice come-backs’ and his faith in the future. ‘It’s what you make of it’ (Pietermaritzburg, A, middle income, 30–40). ‘You can’t just wait for someone to come and plonk something in your lap’, added another. The more people improve their skills, the greater the opportunities: As white South Africans we have these sort of opportunities given to us because of the legacy that we have. That financially a lot of us, our parents helped us out. Or they supported us in what we were trying to do with our lives. And so, we have those opportunities done us. We just need to take them and to use them to the best of our abilities instead of sort of sitting on our laurels and waiting for something to happen. (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40)

‘Create additional opportunities for yourself ’, exhorted another participant, and ‘maybe in time start up a company that has capacity for other people to work under you, so you can also give them the opportunities too’ (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40). Those who can’t be bothered to help themselves should ‘get out’, added another (Pietermaritzburg, A, middle income, 30–40). Prospering might be heavily dependent upon having money in the first place, but ‘it also has to do with mind-set, knowledge, education … the way you think about life’ (CT southern suburbs, A, middle income, 45–55). Self-help motivation was often allied to a sense of optimism about South Africa’s future. One female participant was adamant that (white) children were brought up better and were better off than children overseas (CT northern suburbs, E/A, lower income, 45–55). Another asserted that her offspring were still very small, but they could read, write, get a decent education, had a roof over their heads and had food to eat. They were ‘very privileged’, already 70 per cent better off than most children in South Africa. So, because of that privilege, and the privilege that the mother herself had received, they needed ‘to be the change, they need to make a difference’ (CT southern suburbs, A, middle income, 45–55). Another parent added: ‘I’m staying so my kids are staying and they are going to make the best of it, go to multi-racial schools and just do what they need to do to make a life’ (CT southern suburbs, E, middle income, 45–55). Yet another declared ‘I couldn’t live without our black people. They are the warmest people’ (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9). Optimism was sometimes expressed, even in spite of misgivings and doubts. One such participant blamed politicians for transforming whites into foreigners in their own country. But: We’re not. I’m sorry, I was born in this country, I was raised in this country. I am not a racial person. This is my home, I have as much right to it. (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9)

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His statement was followed by that of a female participant who stated that she had known South Africa when it was ‘amazing’ and was depressed by what she termed ‘the mass breakdown’. But she went on, ‘they say history always runs in circles’ (even though she added, to laughter, that she did not expect this to happen in South Africa during her lifetime). Even so, when asked whether she was an optimist or a pessimist, she was forthright in her response: I’m very much an optimist because compared to other countries we have freedom of choice. We have freedom of religion. We have, you know, fortunately gay people can be married in this country. There is so many wonderful things that are just overlooked and just stampled [sic] on by the negativity. And I think negativity breeds negativity. So, if we are all nay-sayers, nothing is going to change. So, I think we all need to raise our children to be, to embrace the change and make it work. (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9)

Her sentiments were affirmed by another participant in another group who opted for a stridently patriotic note: I would obviously want my kids to stay in South Africa because I would love them to love South Africa. I mean, this is our country and I think there is a reason that we were born in the country … I want them to love their country. (CT southern suburbs, A, lower income, 45–55)

Attitudes towards political participation In an early review of the prospects for democracy in South Africa, Robert Mattes observed that while the country had recorded some remarkable achievements – avoiding civil war, successfully negotiating two democratic constitutions, holding successive democratic elections and making some impressive economic gains – comparative analysis brought its long-term survival into question. Cross-national analysis had highlighted three broad sets of factors crucial to democratic consolidation: a growing economy that reduces inequality; stable and predictable political institutions; and a supportive political culture. In South Africa’s case, economic gains had been countered by high unemployment, disappointing levels of investment and continuing inequality. Politically, the final constitution had been highly innovative and established a body of supportive institutions, yet proportional representation had worked to limit voters’ control over their elected representatives. When, thirdly, he came to political culture, he reported upon survey results whose findings were troubling. Although there was a widespread popular consensus among South Africans on the existence of a national political community that transcended racial and economic divisions, and although they were likely to reject authoritarian alternatives, only 60 per cent agreed that democracy was preferable to any other kind of government. Worse, measured by contact with political representatives and other influential

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community leaders, South Africa was found to have one of the most passive citizenries in the southern African region, combined with one of highest levels of political protest. The conclusion he drew from this was that, far from being inherently apathetic or passive, South Africans engaged in low rates of formal political participation between elections because the system offers them so few opportunities to do so. Was South Africa, he asked, a ‘Democracy without the People’?10 Two decades later, Mattes’ question continues to be relevant in a South Africa which has experienced the economic decline, billowing corruption and hollowing out of democracy of the Zuma years. Overall, although a significant majority of South Africans continue to support democracy, they do so with only limited enthusiasm – in part because they cannot identify any alternative system which would be better at delivering what they want.11 Given this overview, the doubts which white participants in the focus groups expressed about the viability of democracy appear less stark, suggesting that they may not be so very different from those of other South Africans. Their attitude, if it had to be condensed into a few words, was that by 1994 democracy had become inevitable and necessary, whether or not the conditions for sustaining it in the long term existed. In short, they signalled that while their acceptance of democracy had been real, it had been less than wholehearted. It is against this background that the attitudes of participants in the focus groups towards political participation can be explored. Despite the reservations that had been expressed about the viability of democracy, there was general recognition of the need to make it work. As one conservative participant put it: I think we must accept it although unfortunately there are negative things about it, but overall, I think we must accept it and make the best of it. (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9)

A like-minded participant added that democracy threw up ‘a challenge to see whether we can live together … instead of against each other’ (Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9). In practice, this challenge translated into discussion of voting and, given ANC hegemony, the need for parties of opposition. There were certainly those who accorded little or no value to voting under the new order. One participant stated gloomily that he did not vote because he ‘[didn’t] do promises’ and that ‘man is [always] going to forsake me’ (CT southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40). Another argued (incorrectly) that most whites do not vote ‘because they can’t trust anybody’. This was ascribed to a lack of transparency of ‘the people on top’: 10 Robert Mattes, ‘South Africa: Democracy without the People?’ Journal of Democracy, 13, 1, 1992, pp. 22–36. 11 AfroBarometer, ‘Summary of Results: Round 7 Survey in South Africa, 2018’ .

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If we are going to vote now and we do not know what the party is standing for, then we cannot go and vote. ( Joburg southern suburbs, E/A, middle income, 45–55)

This statement expressed a more widely felt disillusionment with politics and politicians. Asked whether he knew his local councillor, one participant responded bluntly: No, I don’t frankly, I don’t care where he is either because … I mean, nothing happens. If parliament can’t even do anything, what is he going to do? So that is how I feel. I think a lot of people feel that way. It is frustration upon frustration to the point you know rather to look after myself. What do I need just to get by? (CT northern suburbs, E, middle income, 45–55)

In speaking as he did, this last participant expressed a more widely shared view that the ANC ignored the wishes and needs of minorities, and most particularly, of whites. However, for the majority of participants, this only underlined the importance which they attached to voting. As one of the most vocal explained: If we don’t vote for a particular party, then we don’t have no right to complain about what happens in the country. My point of view, if the ANC was not corrupt I [would] probably be voting for the ANC. I [would] be on the ANC’s side. Because they are corrupt they have no good track record. But there aren’t any parties that have a good track record. But you want a party … that can fight the battles against another party. You don’t want one party to have all the power … So, there is no right party. You have to be very careful when you do choose a party who you vote for. (CT northern suburbs, E, upper income, 45–55)

Another participant stated that she had taken issue with her friends who had chosen not to vote because they felt their vote was insignificant but were the first to complain about government performance. She considered that their failure to turn up at the polls: … stemmed from a misunderstanding of how the voting system worked and also a misunderstanding of how their vote is actually valid. Because, and I know this sounds a bit harsh, but I literally said to them, if you’re not going to take an active stand in trying to change it, you can’t come and complain about it because you’ve done nothing. You just sat there. And so, I explained to them like, yes, maybe your one vote is not going to be the tipping factor. It’s not going to be the one that takes things over, but by giving smaller parties seats in parliament and by giving them an opportunity to … sort of try and do the change they want to. There was definitely a party that someone could agree with. So, just taking that extra bit of time. I think we also, we become a bit complacent in the sense of no, someone else will change it. ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24)

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Broad agreement about the need to vote was matched by discussion of what influences shaped people’s voting decisions. Family background was recognized as influential by participants of different political persuasions. Former nationalists explained that they had voted for the NP because it was what their parents had done, and it had represented Afrikaners. Similarly, an English-speaking participant explained that her grandparents and parents had voted for parties which had had white interests at heart. Yet all agreed that generational influence was declining – if only because the NP was no longer available to be voted for or, more interestingly, because younger voters were more progressive. ‘You can’t just generalize whites’, it was argued, because whites had different beliefs and interests, and on the whole, the older generation was more conservative – ‘in a sense, pro-apartheid’. In contrast, younger people were ‘way more liberal’ and were at the forefront in pushing for ‘liberation and freedom’ ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). According to this mantra, young people were more likely to consider parties upon their merits. Even if their values continued to align with those of their parents, they were nonetheless more likely to vote for a party which – rather than just speaking for whites – had all people’s interests at heart ( Joburg, northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). One participant was to put it robustly, if less elegantly. She wanted everybody to work together: ‘We don’t want whites only and all that shit. We want everybody working together’ ( Joburg southern suburbs, E/A, middle income, 45–55). What mattered was the representation of interests. As one participant who had moved south from Zimbabwe put it: … if everybody spoke the truth no matter what colour you are, if it is for the benefit of everybody in South Africa then you should be represented. (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9)

However, while recognition that voting by interest rather than by race constituted the ideal, it was understood that in practice these were difficult to disentangle. As a result, most whites tended to vote for parties which represented white interests and projected a white voice. All comers, of whatever background, should be in parliament, but not to the exclusion of whites, as ‘they’ve got something to say and they have a role to play and they should be there’ (Howick, E, upper income, 60–9). The perceived convergence of race with voting patterns was underpinned by a growing disillusionment with the ANC. ‘A lot of white people’, explained one participant, voted for the ANC just after apartheid, but their numbers had collapsed because of its poor performance in running the country ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). As a result, they had migrated to other parties, and for most of them this had meant the DA, if only because this had meant going with the flow in suburbia (Pietermaritzburg, E, middle income, 30–40). Overall, the DA was viewed as having accomplished more than other parties and having a good record in rendering the ANC government accountable

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(Brandfort, A, middle income, 60–9). Furthermore, where it had won control of municipalities, it was seen as having done a good job. Simultaneously, however, there was recognition that parliamentary arithmetic ensured that the DA had had to consciously move beyond its white base in order to grow. In turn, this was viewed as increasingly posing white voters with dilemmas, as the increasing black presence in the party had led to increasing internal turmoil and decreasingly effective performance. There were variant responses which reflected the decline of support for the DA which had been registered at the most recent election in 2019.12 One participant explained that although the DA had in recent years ‘gone downhill’ and ‘lost the plot’, she had nonetheless voted for the party in the election because it had been the only party with a realistic chance of preventing the ANC from changing the constitution and taking power in the Western Cape (CT southern suburbs, E, middle income, 30–40). Another stated that he had taken to voting for the ANC at a national level and DA at provincial and city levels (CT southern suburbs, middle income, 30–40). A few other participants indicated that, along with other mainly Afrikaner and conservative voters, they had peeled away from the DA in the recent election (when, notably, the right-wing FF had increased its representation) their criterion being that they would vote for the party which would best represent ‘my religion, my culture, my way of life’ ( Joburg southern suburbs, A, middle income, 45–55). As far as another participant was concerned, this third option represented a more general shift in voting behaviour away from the view that voting for small parties was akin to wasting one’s vote and towards one which embraced the need for greater diversity in parliament and a voice for minority interests. He had wanted to vote Green at the last election but had been frustrated because the party had not made it onto the national ballot. Nonetheless, in his view, the point stood that if small parties possessed a focused message, they could have a disproportionate influence in parliament ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). For one participant, the greater fluidity in voting patterns that was registered in the 2019 elections pointed to a more hopeful future for South Africa. Probably reflecting the hope that many voters of all persuasions felt with the elevation of Cyril Ramaphosa to the presidency, he referred to the passing of the generation of freedom fighters and the arrival of a younger one which, although lacking strong credentials, had risen from local and provincial level upwards through the political system and, because they understood it, would have the capacity to stamp down on the corruption in government and parastatals. He was hopeful that this up-and-coming generation would ‘turn the scales’ and get South Africa back onto ‘the right track’ ( Joburg northern suburbs, E, upper income, 18–24). 12

After reaching a high of 22.2 per cent of the votes cast at the national level in the general election in 2014, the DA’s vote fell back to 20.8 per cent in 2019.

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Whites: reluctant democrats? Melissa Steyn has observed that encounters between those of ‘European stock’ and the previously colonized have had to change dramatically since the end of apartheid. The extent to which they do determines the extent to which the post-apartheid era brings South Africa to fully fledged post-coloniality, ‘as cultural, racial, and political identities are reframed internally, now on different political and psychological terms’.13 In South Africa, layers of colonialism were shed in different stages from 1910 onwards, much as layers of colonialism had been acquired since 1652. However, not least because whites retain significant economic power and cultural authority, that process of decolonization is ongoing and far from complete. With the arrival of ‘the New South Africa’, the ‘master narrative of whiteness’ – the political, cultural and psychological dominance of whites over the colonized majority backed up by the legal enforcement of white minority rule – has fallen apart. White South Africans have been compelled to renegotiate their identity and, in turn, to choose between varied options of personal and social redefinition. As a result, white South Africans today are constructing a range of ‘petit narratives’ of whiteness, each of which is competing to explain and to promote a view of how ‘being white should be construed in the new dispensation’. Yet these varied stories overlap and compete, while simultaneously displaying ideological aspects which are incompatible with, and react against, each other. In short, they no longer add up to a unified story of whiteness, while, simultaneously, they have to contend with a new reality that does not support, and indeed is hostile to, many of the assumptions of superiority and entitlement which the master narrative had inculcated.14 Although Steyn was concerned with identifying changes in white South Africans’ identities, while this work is more specifically concerned with exploring their adaptations to democracy, some two decades on, it is possible to recognize major continuities with the five broad narratives of reworked post-colonial whiteness that she distinguished. Critical to her argument is that whereas the modern era was characterized by a political spectrum of beliefs (her emphasis) ranging from right to left, the post-modern era is characterized by different ways of believing. This new spectrum, she continues, ranges from fundamentalist (those who believe that their beliefs are true in an absolute sense) to constructivist (those who see beliefs as discursive options from which they can choose). Correspondingly, her five narratives (outlined in the preceding chapter) related to the master narrative in different ways. Whereas fundamentalist narratives clung to the master narrative amid a world that was perceived to have ‘gone crazy’, more constructivist narratives inclined towards a more liberatory attitude, 13 14

Steyn, ‘Whiteness’, p. xxiv. Steyn, ‘Whiteness’, pp. 149–52.

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with the new reality being viewed as an opportunity to reconstruct identities along new and more appropriate lines.15 Steyn does not state it explicitly, but the suggestion of her work is that the whites who clung to fundamentalism, those who identified as racial victims and those who had adapted to the post-colonial situation pragmatically far outnumbered those she characterized as either white innocents or white Africans. Broadly speaking, that pattern would seem to be replicated here in the views on being white expressed by the participants in the eight focus groups, although the predominant emphasis here must not only be upon how the different narratives compete but how they co-exist, interpenetrate and feed off each other. Unsurprisingly, white fundamentalism was most strongly present among the participants from Brandfort, located in the rural Free State, in the heartland of former NP territory and in a province where the FF Plus, which siphoned off a significant proportion of Afrikaner votes from the DA in the 2019 election, put in one of its strongest performances.16 Nonetheless, there were strong traces of fundamentalism in the views expressed on the character and viability of democracy, along with the belief that ‘South Africa was on the way down’, across all the focus groups, and among those participants whom it was otherwise easy to identify as racial pragmatists. Yet interpretation of this perspective requires caution. It needs to be recalled that there is perpetual debate among political scientists regarding the conditions required to attain and ‘consolidate’ democracy, with many of them cautioning that a wide range of factors – ranging from high levels of inequality, racial polarization, extensive unemployment and socio-economic deprivation among the black majority – render the long-term sustainability of democracy questionable. Although their work may often be placed upon a spectrum that encompasses conservatism at one end and radicalism at the other, it is far less convincing to assert that it evinces different degrees of ‘whiteness’, even if the discipline continues to be dominated by Western scholarship. Similarly, it is important not to query the legitimacy of the numerous scholarly critiques of the ANC in power, many if not most of which point to its authoritarian inclinations, lack of popular accountability and susceptibility to corruption as explanations for the erosion of its popularity. In short, critical assessments of the performance of either democracy or ANC governance since 1994 cannot in themselves be classified as expressing whiteness (even though some may do so). 15 Steyn, ‘Whiteness’, p. 152. 16 Thokozani Chilenga-Butao, ‘Provincial Dynamics and Results in Elections 2019’, Table 12.19, in Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall (eds), Election 2019: Change and Stability in South Africa’s Democracy, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2019, pp. 190–218. The FF Plus’ best performance was in North West, where it took 4.3 per cent of the provincial vote, followed closely by the Free State, where it took 4 per cent.

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What matters more than the content of critiques is the manner, tone and mood in which they are expressed. Popular discussion is unlikely to be as theoretically robust as that of political scientists, nor as closely based upon the examination of evidence. Political scientists and popular discussion may both agree that a low level of education and skills within a population may pose a challenge to consolidating democracy. Yet what would seem to justify much of the discussion of democracy in the focus groups as fundamentalist is its sense of pessimism, this borne out by the widely shared conviction that South Africa is going downhill fast and en route to becoming a second Zimbabwe. In turn, a similar pessimism pervaded the discussions of BEE and crime, with these being easily identified as betraying a widely shared sense of white victimhood. This suggests that such themes of disenchantment with the outcome of democracy feature regularly as ‘table talk’ among many whites, as does the graveyard humour which makes regular entry into their conversations. Nonetheless, while it is important to acknowledge that disillusion with democracy since 1994 was almost universally shared among participants, there were significantly different perspectives on possibilities and futures. Interestingly, it was agreed across the board that the transition to democracy had been inevitable and necessary, even though there were differences of opinion about the success enjoyed by the de Klerk government in negotiating adequate protections for whites and other minorities. There was not a single participant among the eight groups who argued that the apartheid security establishment should have hung on to power. Yet what did differ was the manner in which respondents felt they had the power to shape their future, even amid the constraints to which whites were subject in post-apartheid South Africa. Among the most fundamentalist participants was a sense that, while they themselves had lost control over many aspects of their lives, they placed their faith in the Almighty and, ultimately, he remained in charge of the broad flow of events. A moment in the discussion in Brandfort among the oldest category of our respondents (60–9) was particularly revealing: The NP government to my knowledge were religious persons who prayed, they opened their parliament with prayer, people prayed about this matter, which way we should go, what choice there [was] for us. There was a lot of praying about that. The population prayed a lot about that, and the Lord gave us direction. On voting day 1994, there were people who thought here come big trouble, and everything went peacefully, as you may remember. (Brandfort, A, upper income, 60–9)

His views were endorsed in comments which ranged from ‘change was inevitable’ and ‘there would have been war’, through to ‘my feeling [is] that the Lord is still in control of the country’, even if ‘it is not according to our will which we cannot now see as yet’. The moral drawn from this was that ‘we must just stay on our knees and keep praying’. Yet, interestingly, even among this fatalism, which was

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not entirely absent from other groups, there were inklings of a positive future, of ‘making the best of it’. With God looking on, there was ‘still lots that can happen in this country’ and ‘many opportunities for people who would use them’. The belief that, despite many opportunities being closed down to them, whites retain significant control over their lives is the central attribute of Steyn’s white pragmatism. One way of exercising this is by emigrating, and she astutely notes that most white emigrants are not merely leaving the country to find a new location where they will be physically safe and economically comfortable, but to find a new home which is supportive of their white identity. If young whites leave today and head for somewhere ‘exotic’ like China or Saudi Arabia, they do so to make money, many proclaiming their intention to return to South Africa. Yet the overwhelming majority of emigrants head for countries of the Anglocentric world and are all looking to replace the home they are leaving behind. ‘Home’ under colonialism had particular connotations for the colonists, even among settler populations, many of whom had never even visited their metropolis. Home was a place which provided a sense of cultural security and ‘homogeneous identity’. It was a psychic space of white belonging to which social entry was denied even to those few of the colonized who had ventured into its physical arena. From this perspective, Steyn presents the master narrative as a mechanism for converting Africa into what Elspeth Huxley referred to in the Kenyan context as a ‘white man’s country’,17 not merely a physical but also a psychological home. It was in this sense that settlers of Dutch origin, retaining little emotional connection to their country of origin, transformed themselves into Afrikaners. As a result, Africa’s ‘white tribe’ was always to be confident that South Africa was their home in a far less ambiguous fashion than was the case for English-­speaking and other immigrant communities from Europe.18 Correspondingly, van der Westhuizen links the increasing ‘globalization’ of Afrikaners, their embracing of ‘global liberal values’, to their simultaneous anglicization.19 As indicated above, democratization in South Africa has been accompanied by a steady outflow of emigrants, the large majority of whom have been white. It would be unsurprising if investigation were to demonstrate that ‘Saffer’ emigrant communities in foreign lands, from Perth to Vancouver to Wimbledon, were among the most determined to show that the country they had left behind was failing and, as Brandon Huntley and the Endres family were to claim, no longer safe for whites to inhabit. However, as has also been demonstrated, the overwhelming majority of the white population has remained, largely by choice, 17 Elspeth Huxley, White Man’s Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya, London, Macmillan, 2 vols, 1935. 18 See, notably, David Harrison, The White Tribe of Africa: South Africa in Perspective, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1982. 19 Van der Westhuizen, White Power and the Rise and Fall of the National Party, Cape Town, Zebra Press, 2007, p. 287.

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and betrays every indication of identifying, often passionately, with South Africa’s land and people as ‘home’, even if for some this simultaneously means that at times they feel they have been rendered uitlanders [foreigners] in their own country. Nonetheless, with the displacement of the master narrative, there has been a need to adjust, to adapt to a South Africa over which whites no longer dominate. After more than a quarter of a century of de facto black rule, of democracy, it is scarcely surprising that, co-existent with widespread beliefs that the tables have been turned and they are now the victims of reverse racism and disadvantage, the overwhelming proportion of whites have become pragmatists, getting on with their lives, seizing their opportunities and making the best of things. At times, and especially among the young, their pragmatism is infused with proclamations of white innocence and a lack of individual responsibility for apartheid, this being matched with confused feelings of recognition that older whites have much to answer for alongside guilt at the idea of betraying grandparents, parents and elders. Meanwhile, the widespread sense of disillusionment with the way democracy has worked out is counter-balanced by the strong belief of most in the value of the vote, a high rate of participation by whites in elections and stress upon the importance of the activity of opposition parties in giving voice to their interests and holding government accountable. In its most positive (if most rare) manifestations, this constitutes a total (not token) commitment to African-ness and the vision of non-racialism and democracy. These enthusiasts, few but nonetheless present among the focus group participants, constitute those who in Steyn’s terms regard the contemporary situation as an opportunity to put the master narrative behind them.20 Participants were directly asked whether whites were best described as ‘reluctant democrats’. The most forthright and thoughtful direct answer was delivered by one participant as follows: I think everyone is a reluctant democrat in this country because it doesn’t matter what you vote for, nobody is satisfied. Nobody is like getting what they want. Taxpayers feel that they are getting completely drained. The unemployed don’t have any work. The people who are affected by crime don’t see criminals getting locked up. Everybody participates but nobody is satisfied. (CT southern suburbs, E, upper income, 30–40)

This answer could have been provided by a person of any background. Yet what is important about the statement is that there is no quarrel with the idea of democracy. Whites may have been more resigned to the inevitability of democracy than eager to accept it in 1994, but accept it they did, and the focus group discussions gave little indication of a hankering for other systems of government. There were some significant indications of nostalgia for white minority rule, but 20 Steyn, ‘Whiteness’, p. 154.

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no hint of a yearning for it to be brought back. Whether or not this was because such an idea was inherently implausible is beside the point: acceptance of the fact of democracy was universal. In contrast, what was in evidence was much discontent with the realities of democratic rule under the ANC. In this, if survey results are anything to go by, the white focus group participants were in harness with the large majority of South Africans, even though the source of discontents was likely to have been substantially different from those of other communities. Mattes was to conclude that while South Africans’ support for democracy was ‘modest’, this was not because they clung to norms, values, beliefs or predispositions which were hostile to it but because they understood it to mean the delivery of a range of socio-economic goods, and progress towards this goal had been slow.21 What white and black and rich and poor want delivered may vary considerably, but – on the whole – whites are democrats, even if – as the following chapter will elaborate – they are most often conservative ones. Given South Africa’s history, that constitutes a considerable achievement.

21

Mattes, ‘South Africa’, p. 33.

8 Political Liberalism after Apartheid: The Democratic Alliance The DA has established itself as the principal party of opposition in post-­apartheid South Africa. As such, it demands attention for a number of reasons. The first is that it is the latest embodiment in party form of the liberal tradition, claiming its inheritance from both the LP and more especially the PFP. The second is that it is the party which most whites who participate politically reward with their votes and through which the white voice is heard. Correspondingly, third, it is regularly depicted by its major opponents, notably the ruling ANC, as being vigorously dedicated to serving white interests and white interests alone. The irony in all this is that, today, the DA proclaims its commitment to non-racialism perhaps even more loudly than the ANC. It points to the increasing racial diversity of its leadership, membership and support base, and charges that, in contrast, the ANC has become increasingly Africanist, more racially exclusive and ever less representative of the South African rainbow. Sadly, what has become clear as the years have rolled by is that, contrary to the intentions of the founders of South Africa’s democracy, the political arena has become increasingly racialized. The DA has been irretrievably caught up in this story. Indeed, although the party is formally and substantively committed to non-­racialism, it has become trapped by race and is unlikely to escape its confinement in its present form.

The challenge of race Descended most recently from the PFP and DP, the DA is proud of its liberal heritage, and today claims that its politics is a combination of liberal principle and pragmatic politics. This revolves around three fundamental platforms. The first is commitment to the constitutional state – that is, one whose government is bound by the constitution, the rule of law, the Bill of Rights, regular and free elections and a separation of ruling party and state. Second comes the promotion of an ‘Open Opportunity Society’ whereby there is equality of opportunity for all, regardless of the circumstances of birth. This entails the right of all to 156

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private ownership and free participation in a market economy alongside the state’s obligation to achieve the substantive equality of citizens by progressive realization of access to housing, health services and social security for people unable to help themselves.1 Third is a commitment to non-racialism, by which is meant: non-discrimination on the basis of race; seeing people as individuals and not as mere facsimiles of abstract racial archetypes; avoiding assumptions about people on the basis of their race; recognizing the need to redress the consequences of racial discrimination.2

The DA argues that it has had to pursue its principles within a hostile political terrain, maintaining that while the ANC is broadly tolerant of opposition, it retains the authoritarian instincts of a liberation movement. Yet the particular challenge that the DA (and its immediate predecessor, the DP) has always had to confront is the charge that for all its claims to non-racialism, it has remained a party which is run for and by whites, and is inherently unable to overcome a widespread aversion among blacks to political liberalism as it has evolved in South Africa.3 Although white liberal scholars have offered a robust response, arguing that the equation of whites with liberalism is a distortion of the truth,4 political liberalism undoubtedly faces a major problem in a society where politics remains so closely aligned to race. How the DP (and the DA after it) sought to grapple with this dilemma is the subject of this chapter.

The Democratic Alliance: formation and performance, 2000–19 Liberalism may have triumphed in the form of the new constitution, but the DP’s first showing in a democratic election, when it won just seven seats in the new National Assembly, was disastrous. In party terms, it came in a dismal fifth place, behind not just the NP and IFP but even the right-wing FF. For the most part, white voters had played for safety by backing de Klerk. Party leader Zach 1 2 3

4

‘Values and Principles: Democratic Alliance’, undated . Ryan Coetzee, Tony Leon and Michiel Le Roux, ‘What Is Wrong with the Da, and How to Fix It’, 19 October 2019 . M.G. Makgoba, ‘Oppositions, Difficulties, and Tensions between Liberalism and African Thought’, in Johnson and Welsh, Ironic Victory: Liberalism in Post-Liberation South Africa, Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 265–92; and Themba Sono, ‘Why Are There so Few Black Liberals?’ in Johnson and Welsh, Ironic Victory, pp. 293–306. R.W. Johnson, ‘The Best of Enemies? Black Intellectuals and White Liberals’, in Johnson and Welsh, Ironic Victory, pp. 307–20.

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de Beer immediately fell on his sword, making way for Tony Leon to be elected to replace him. From then on, the narrative became very different as the party progressed from one electoral triumph to another until, ironically under its first black leader, Mmusi Maimane, the DA encountered its first major setback in 2019. Subsequently, the party was to enter a bout of internal turmoil caused by dissensions around ‘race’. Table 8.1: National elections: party percentages of votes1 ANC DP/DA EFF IFP NNP Others 1

1994

1999

2004

2009

2014

2019

62.7 1.7 * 10.5 20.4 4.7

66.4 9.6 * 8.6 6.9 8.5

69.7 12.4 * 6.9 1.7 9.3

65.9 16.7 * 4.6 * 12.8

62.2 22.2 6.4 2.4 * 6.8

57.5 20.8 10.8 3.4 * 7.5

‘Others’ includes spoilt votes.

Source: Collette Schulz-Herzenberg, ‘The 2019 National Election Results’, Table 11.5 in Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall (eds), Election 2019: Change and Stability in South Africa’s Democracy, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2019, pp. 170–89.

Marthinus van Schalkwyk had succeeded de Klerk after the latter had stood down as NP leader, the party now styling itself as the New National Party (NNP) to distance itself from apartheid. Yet little else had changed about the party, and after he had led the NNP to its dismal showing in the 1999 election, van Schalkwyk initiated talks about merging the former ruling party with the DP, which had so recently humiliated it at the polls. The subsequent story of the merger has been told in great detail by both Tony Leon and Helen Zille (who succeeded him as party leader).5 Although unashamedly written from the DA’s perspective, their views largely accord with supplementary analyses of the resulting turmoil within opposition ranks, culminating in van Schalkwyk’s decision to leave the DA to join the ANC in 2001. The birth of the DA was formally announced on 25 June 1999. Although legislation which forbade floor-crossing in parliament and provincial legislatures meant that the DP and NNP would need to retain their separate identities at the national and provincial levels until the 2004 general elections, they would now be 5

Tony Leon, On the Contrary: Leading the Opposition in a Democratic South Africa, Johannesburg and Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2008, Ch. 16; Helen Zille, Not Without a Fight: The Autobiography, Cape Town, Penguin, 2016, Ch. 9.

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able to fight the June 2000 local government elections under the single banner of the DA, led by Leon as the party’s leader and van Schalkwyk as his deputy. The political reverberations of the merger were far-reaching. The NNP and DA had already coalesced to form the provincial government in the Western Cape, the only province to escape the ANC in the 1999 general election. However, the timing of the merger prevented the new DA from fighting the 2000 local elections as a united entity. As a result, the two signatory parties agreed to adopt a ‘relative strength’ principle whereby DP-selected candidates would run as DA in local council areas where the DP had been stronger than the NNP, with the reverse happening in areas where the NNP had been strongest. Although a rough-and-ready agreement, its outcome proved a triumph, the DA receiving some 22 per cent of the vote across the country and, importantly, winning control of the Cape Town metropolitan council along with a number of other municipalities (mainly in the Western Cape). Yet rather than this leading to greater cooperation, it led to vicious contestation between the former DP and NNP elements within the new party. Leon and Zille put forward convincing evidence that van Schalkwyk and the NNP leadership at national and local levels sought to engineer a ‘reverse takeover’ of the DA through the manipulation of internal elections for the selection of the new party’s candidates for national, provincial and local legislatures. In addition to this, given van Schalkwyk’s reluctance, as deputy leader, to play second fiddle to Leon, a showdown became inevitable. This occurred in October 2001 when Leon demanded that van Schalkwyk close down the NNP as a separate wing of the party. The latter refused to comply, and responded by taking the NNP out of the DA and climbing into bed with the ANC. In the Western Cape, this resulted in the collapse of the NNP–DP government in favour of an NNP–ANC coalition, which after a year was to be led by van Schalkwyk himself as premier. The withdrawal of the NNP from the DA led very directly to one of the most disreputable interludes in post-apartheid politics. The constitution had laid down that members of all elected bodies were required to resign from the legislative body concerned if they chose to leave the party under whose aegis they had been elected. However, as part of its pact with the NNP, the ANC had agreed to initiate legislation which would allow the 1,400 councillors who had been elected in the year 2000 under DA colours to leave the party and cross back to their original parties. In many cases, this would lead to collapse of DA-run municipalities in favour of new coalitions between the ANC and NNP. Suffice to say that the ANC found a way to guide a law through parliament facilitating floor-crossing without actually having to amend the constitution.6 When this 6

An ingenious solution was found by dredging up Section 13 of Annexure A of Schedule 6 of the final constitution, which was deemed to allow a law to be passed enabling floor-crossing at national and provincial levels, with local councillors

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was challenged in the constitutional court on the grounds that it would offend the principle of proportional representation, the court found reason to condone the principle of floor-crossing, but sent the law back to parliament, insisting on its amendment to restrict floor-crossing at national and provincial levels to two limited terms per electoral period. However, it allowed floor-crossing to proceed at a local level. The immediate outcome was that a total of 555 local government councillors across the country crossed the floor. Nearly four-fifths of these were from the DA, most of whom went back to the NNP, with the result that the DA now lost control of half of the councils it had won in 2000, including the major plum of Cape Town, these now falling to the ANC–NNP. But floor-crossing brought only short-term gain to the NNP. Politicians who crossed the floor were widely condemned as ‘crosstitutes’, and within the ranks of the NNP particularly, there were many reservations about aligning with the ANC. Indeed, in a floor-­crossing window in 2003 in parliament, nine MPs who had been elected under NNP colours in the 1999 election crossed over to the DA, leaving van Schalkwyk presiding over a rump. Their actions reflected wider opinion among the NNP’s traditional constituency. At the 2004 general election, the NP’s supporters fled the party in droves, allowing it a mere 1.65 per cent share of the national electorate. Even van Schalkwyk could read the tea leaves, and in April 2005, the NNP voted itself out of existence, all seven of its remaining MPs crossing over to the ANC. True to form, van Schalkwyk leveraged himself a place in the cabinet, as Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, a post which he was to hold until 2013, when he was posted to Greece as an ambassador.

The DA’s political trajectory Traditionally, political liberalism in South Africa had identified with a ‘colour-blind’ view of non-racialism which had sought to avoid discriminating for or against individuals on the basis of race, while simultaneously recognizing the necessity of bringing about a more racially equal society. Since the end of apartheid, this stance has posed continual dilemmas for the DP and its successor, the DA, as the parties of liberalism. Both have struggled to balance their principled commitment to individualism with the electoral need to accept the necessity, or virtue, of pursuing equalizing policies of racial preference. Its difficulties have been perpetually compounded by the ANC establishing itself from its earliest days in power as the party of ‘equity employment’ (affirmative action) and BEE. The political trajectory of the DP/DA has passed through successive phases which roughly follow shifts in the party’s leadership. The first phase was one of being accorded the same right through a similar amendment to the 1998 Municipal Structures Act.

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assertive conservative liberalism under Tony Leon, whereby the party set out to displace the NNP as the major party of opposition and capture its constituency; the second phase is that of the leadership of Helen Zille, whereby the party sought to shift away from racial minority concerns to widen its appeal to black voters; this merged into a third phase, which saw the party’s first black leader seeking to shift the DA decisively in favour of ‘transformation’; in the fourth phase, however, this culminated in the DA’s first major electoral reversal in the 2019 election, Maimane’s loss of the leadership and Zille’s re-emergence on the scene to lead the DA back to a conservative version of liberalism in which racial preference plays no part.

Muscular liberalism under Leon Leon acknowledged that the arrival of democracy had left the DP without a strategy. Under apartheid it had not needed a map: ‘It was anti-apartheid: it opposed the National Party’s authoritarian state and the tyranny that upheld it.’7 From the moment he assumed the leadership, he set out to give it a new sense of direction by turning a historically white, minority, liberal political tradition into an electable multi-racial voting bloc. He started by declining the offer of a seat in the GNU cabinet made by Mandela on the grounds that democracy needed an opposition. Then, assisted by his appointment as a party strategist of Ryan Coetzee, who was no less abrasive as an attack dog than Leon himself, he embarked upon the capture of the vote of the racial minorities from the NP which, apart from claiming the overwhelming portion of the white vote, had more or less split the Coloured and Indian vote with the ANC in 1994. Leon’s aim was to position the DP as offering more muscular opposition to the ANC than the NP. This was easy enough while the NP remained in coalition with the ANC in the GNU. Even after that, it was not too difficult, as what had now become the NNP had little conception of how to perform as an opposition. In any case, voters’ trust in the party had been undermined by de Klerk’s replacement by van Schalkwyk, who was widely regarded as a lightweight. However, the crucial moment in this battle came when the DP adopted ‘Fight Back!’ as its campaign slogan for the country’s second democratic election in 1999. Although publicly calling for a ‘fight back’ against corruption, crime, poverty and unemployment, the slogan left little doubt that it was sending out a dog whistle to Coloureds and Indians that they were not ‘black enough’ to qualify for affirmative action under ANC whose motif had changed from ‘national reconciliation’ under Mandela to ‘black empowerment’ under Mbeki. The ANC immediately denounced the ‘Fight Back!’ slogan as racist. Equally unsurpris7

Tony Leon, ‘South African Liberalism Today and Its Discontents’, in M. Shain (ed.), Opposing Voices: Liberalism and Opposition in South Africa Today, Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2006, (37–48) citation p. 38.

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ingly, there were many qualms about it among liberals themselves.8 However, their troubled consciences were soon to be assuaged. The ‘Fight Back!’ slogan may have been cynically ambiguous, but it proved dramatically successful, helping the DP to jump from fifth to second in the party pecking order and making it the official opposition. Furthermore, it now allowed the DP to credibly profile itself as a multi-racial party, albeit representing the racial minorities rather than black Africans. It was ready to dispatch the NNP to history. The disappearance of the NNP brought to the fore the DA’s dilemma of whether it was to become a party for the racial minorities, with the Western Cape as its bulwark, or present itself as an alternative government, appealing to all South Africans of whatever race, colour or creed. Support for the first option may have been increased by the party’s absorption of members of the former NNP. Support for the second option was always going to be stronger among those who reasoned that restricting the party’s appeal to racial minorities would place limits upon its capacity to grow and, in any case, would be incompatible with non-racialism. For the party leadership, there was never any question that it needed to extend its appeal to black Africans, who represented the majority of the voting population. It was a challenge which was taken up in the election of 2004. In 1999, the DP had used the ‘Fight Back!’ slogan to detach Afrikaans-­ speaking voters from the NNP. Now, in 2004, Leon cranked up efforts to prove the DA’s non-racialism by making determined efforts to take its campaign to the townships, while simultaneously seeking an African partnership by striking up a working relationship with the IFP, whose participation in the GNU, which had always been awkward, was in the throes of becoming unstuck. In so doing, Leon was stylishly packaged as an alternative president, the unquestioned leader of leaders of parties of opposition. In his forays into black areas, he was constantly accompanied by throngs of black supporters wearing DA T-shirts and waving party flags, although Mbeki thwarted his bid for mutual pre-eminence by refusing to take him on in a US-style, head-to-head, televised debate. Throughout the campaign, the ANC’s determined attacks upon the DA as racially divisive firmed the conviction that it was viewed as the principal enemy. However, while this served to drain the remaining life out of the NNP, the results of the election indicated that it had done little to persuade black voters to abandon the ANC. Indeed, the ANC recorded its best ever performance. Although the DA could 8

Helen Zille has recorded Coetzee’s revealing justification of the slogan after she had expressed her discomfort with it during the campaign. ‘Helen, you still don’t get it, do you? Every day we want the election to be depicted as a contest between the ANC and the DP. We have achieved exactly that. There are two dogs in this fight, and we are one of them. It makes us look bigger, stronger and more relevant than we are.’ Helen Zille, Not without a Fight: The Autobiography, Cape Town, Penguin, 2016, p. 143.

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say the same, its vote tally – 12.4 per cent – came as a disappointment in a contest where support for the NNP had collapsed and that for the IFP had declined. Part of the problem was programmatic. The DA had backed the introduction of a basic income grant (BIG), a highly progressive option for addressing poverty. However, it had combined this with campaigning against BEE, affirmative action and minimum wages, favouring instead a shift towards free market economics and more flexible labour laws. Notwithstanding the potential merits of BIG (which the government dismissed as unaffordable), it was relatively easy for the ANC to present the DA as anti-black and pro-white, despite the party having increased the proportion of black Africans on its national and provincial lists from just 14 per cent in 1994 to 34 per cent in this latest election.9 Meanwhile, Leon’s reputation for integrity was compromised by his mid-campaign U-turn on capital punishment, which he now hailed as an antidote to crime. This was a clumsy appeal to the conservative vote (albeit across racial divisions) and it deeply offended the DA’s traditional constituency on a cardinal point of liberal principle. Secondly, the forging of an alliance of convenience with the IFP, dubbed the ‘Coalition for Change’, appeared to be a play by the DA to replace the ANC as the IFP’s coalition partner in the provincial government in KwaZulu-Natal. Given the fiercely competitive rivalry between the ANC and the IFP, the DA was always unlikely to attract votes from either. Worse, its attraction of refugees from the NNP threatened to tilt it in a conservative direction which would be deeply unappealing to the black majority. In short, in the 2004 election, the DA made few inroads into the black vote and did little to burnish its Africanist credentials.10

Breaking the racial mould? The DA under Zille Leon remains a controversial figure, yet the ultimate measure of his achievement was the major role he played in the final extinction of the NNP and his success in establishing the DA as the unchallenged opposition in parliament. A further major triumph was the DA’s winning a first major prize in the local government elections in 2006, when it displaced the ANC to gain control of the Cape Town City Council (even though it needed the support of a clutch of smaller parties to do so). Even so, these latest elections constituted something of a setback, the party’s reduced share of the vote (down from 22.1 per cent in the 2000 municipal poll to 16.3 per cent) reflecting the withdrawal of the NNP from the DA. 9 10

Karen Ferree, Framing the Race in South Africa: The Political Origins of Racial-Census Elections, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 154. Roger Southall, ‘The State of Party Politics: Struggles within the Tripartite Alliance and the Decline of Opposition’, in John Daniel, Adam Habib and Roger Southall (eds), State of the Nation: South Africa 2003–2004, Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2004, pp. 53–77.

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Leon decided that after thirteen years in the party leadership, it was time to go. His decision was confirmed by a memorandum from Ryan Coetzee which warned that changing demographics would steadily erode the DA’s present electoral base and argued the urgent need for change if it was to present itself as a credible non-racial alternative to the ANC. Key to this was the persona of the party’s national leader. Unless they could appeal to black voters, the DA’s future was grim. What followed was Leon’s decision to publicly announce his decision to quit in February 2007, allowing a relatively brief campaign period prior to a leadership election at the DA’s congress in May.11 Helen Zille emerged as the comfortable winner in a contest in which she defeated long-standing parliamentarian Athol Trollip and the party’s chairman, Joe Seramane, and had to face down a campaign by former NNP members of the DA who profiled her as a threat to Afrikaners.12 The election of Zille provided the opportunity for the DA to rebrand itself. As a former journalist with the Rand Daily Mail who had played an important role in exposing Steve Biko’s murder and as someone who had sheltered ANC activists from the apartheid security services, her profile was very different from Leon’s, whose aggressive style was said to be offensive to blacks. Furthermore, she was totally committed to rendering the DA more racially diverse and attracting increased black support, even if this would displease right-wingers who had stayed in the party following the departure of the NNP. She was to steer the DA towards the promotion of increased numbers of black Africans among its representatives and membership, as she shifted the party’s position away from direct criticism of the ANC for its racial preference policies in favour of attacking it as creating ‘a closed, crony society’ wherein individuals’ prospects were determined by their political links to the party. In this way, she was able to criticize the ANC yet simultaneously avoid expressing a lack of support for equity employment and BEE. Although the party under Zille never moved so far as to embrace race-based policies, this was a noticeable shift from focusing on minority concerns. Zille was to remain at the helm of the party until May 2015 when, like Leon, she opted to stand down, despite expectations that she would remain as leader until after the 2016 local elections. During her term of office, the image and the management of the DA underwent a major overhaul. Central to this was her determination to demonstrate that the DA could be more than just an opposition by availing itself of any opportunity to govern wherever and whenever it could. She kicked this strategy off by choosing to remain as mayor of Cape Town rather than going to parliament after her election as leader, a choice she followed up by becoming premier of the Western Cape after the election of 2009. It was a choice that risked competition from the leader of the DA in parliament. 11 Leon, On the Contrary, pp. 663–85. 12 Zille, Not without a Fight, pp. 249–62.

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Although this was initially avoided while long-time party servant Athol Trollip was in the job, it came back to bite Zille after he lost his position to a recently elected MP, Lindiwe Mazibuko, in 2011. Mazibuko’s rise was all part of the drive by the DA to become more racially diverse. The project began in earnest during the 2009 election campaign, when the party shifted gear from its ‘colour-blind’ approach to economic policy to one which proposed a more active role for the state in order to tackle the legacy of apartheid, a strategy which moved the DA closer to the ANC in policy terms.13 This was combined with Zille making determined forays into black areas, taking pains to be seen in the DA’s new dark blue T-shirt, surrounded by black supporters.14 This was not always easy, as the party often encountered strong resistance from local contingents of the ANC seeking to render black areas impermeable to opposition infiltration, especially from the DA. Yet it was not until the 2011 local elections that the strategy really took off, when Zille took the fight ever deeper into ANC territory, interspersing her English and Afrikaans with her ever-improving isiXhosa. Both symbolically and territorially, the DA appropriated much of the style and imagery of the ANC itself. Zille launched the DA’s 2011 manifesto in Kliptown, the birthplace of the Freedom Charter, with thousands of DA supporters bussed in, with people blowing vuvuzelas, whistling and shouting ‘Viva DA, viva Helen Zille, viva!’ She then went on to mark Freedom Day (28 April) in Solomon Mahlangu Square in Mamelodi, Pretoria, while her supporters again danced and sang reworked ‘struggle songs’. Even more irritating to the ANC was Zille’s claim that, while the ANC had become increasingly racialized, the DA had become the party of non-racialism, embodying the vision and spirit of Nelson Mandela.15 This claim was backed up in 2013 by the DA’s adoption of a policy of ‘economic inclusion’ which acknowledged the need for race-based redress during a ‘transitional phase’ to overcome the legacies of apartheid.16 This was followed in the 2014 election campaign by a ‘Know your DA’ campaign which stressed how the party’s predecessor, the PFP, had played its own part in the struggle for liberation, opposing apartheid laws, denouncing the brutal response to the Soweto uprising, opposing the border war in Angola and meeting with the ANC in exile 13 Fiona Anciano, ‘A Dying Ideal: Non-Racialism and Political Parties in Post-­ Apartheid South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 42, 2, 2016, pp. 195–214. 14 Zwelethu Jolobe, ‘The Democratic Alliance: Consolidating the Official Opposition’, in Roger Southall and John Daniel (eds), Zunami! The 2009 South African Elections, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2009, pp. 131–46. 15 Zwelethu Jolobe, ‘A Party for All the People? The DA and the 2011 Local Elections’, in Susan Booysen (ed.), Local Elections in South Africa: Parties, People, Politics, Bloemfontein, SUN Press, 2012, pp. 133–51. 16 Anciano, ‘A Dying Ideal’.

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in 1986. A strong light was shone on Zille’s own role in fighting apartheid as journalist and member of the liberal Black Sash, the UDF and the End Conscription Campaign, as well as the fact that she had hidden ANC activists in her home. The DA, the narrative concluded, was a continuation of that tradition, and had brought together people from a host of political backgrounds around shared values of non-racialism and opportunities for all. Its leaders had their roots in virtually all the different traditions of struggle history, ranging from the ANC, PAC and UDF through to Black Consciousness. As a result, it had now become not merely South Africa’s most diverse party, but also its fastest-growing.17 By this time, the DA’s diversity had been boosted by the absorption of the Independent Democrats (ID), which drew most of its backing from Coloured voters in the Western and Northern Cape provinces. The ID had been launched by Patricia de Lille when she had crossed the floor from the PAC during the 2003 floor-crossing window, having played a major role in denouncing the ANC government’s major arms deal of 1998 as corrupt. It presented its platform as combining a war on corruption with liberal principles to promote greater equity, thereby presenting itself as a likely partner for the DA. However, De Lille had not been disposed to give up the ID’s independence lightly, and it was only after the DA had won power at the provincial level under its own steam that De Lille was to agree to merge the ID into the larger party in August 2010. Yet she had remained nervous about joining a party that the ANC denounced as white. Zille records that De Lille only made the decision after they had together made an approach to Dr Mamphela Ramphele, one-time Black Consciousness icon and by this time former vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town and former managing director of the World Bank, to join the party at the same time. Although she had declined, she had given her enthusiastic backing to the merger, and appeared together with both Zille and De Lille on a number of public platforms. It seemed only a matter of time before she came on board. Zille had thereafter continued her wooing, arguing that for the DA to make an electoral breakthrough nationally, it would be necessary for the party to have a respected black African leader and that Ramphele was the ideal person for the job. However, this was to lead to what she was to later describe as her biggest mistake in politics. Ramphele, as it turned out, had highly unrealistic expectations of her own political worth, stating publicly that she was targeting some 13 million voters who were disillusioned with the ANC but unwilling to consider existing opposition parties as an option. Accordingly, instead of joining the DA outright, she launched her own ‘political platform’, Agang (Sotho for ‘Let’s Build’), as a catalyst for uniting the opposition parties to unseat the ANC in February 2013. 17 Zwelethu Jolobe, ‘The Democratic Alliance Election Campaign: “Ayisafani”?’, in Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall (eds), Election 2014 South Africa: The Campaigns, Results and Future Prospects, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2014, pp. 57–71.

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However, when none fell in behind her, she opted to throw Agang behind the DA, allowing Zille to announce her as the DA’s candidate for president and the merging of the two parties in January 2014. It proved a major miscalculation on both sides. Ramphele had failed to consult adequately with her supporters; Agang argued unrealistically for equal partnership with the DA; Ramphele insisted on retaining Agang membership rather than joining the DA; and Zille encountered strong push-back within the DA to Ramphele’s being parachuted into the leadership. By mid-February, the deal had collapsed, and Agang went on to fight the election on its own, only for Ramphele to be brought rapidly down to earth when the party achieved a mere 0.3 per cent of the vote.18 There was a further consequence of the Ramphele episode which did further damage to the DA’s credibility, namely the resignation from the party of Lindiwe Mazibuko. She had joined the party as a researcher after graduate studies at the University of Cape Town before being elected to parliament in the 2009 election. An impressive public performer, she had received a warm welcome from Zille, who swiftly appointed her to become party spokesperson, a position usually reserved for an experienced parliamentarian, and became ‘the face of the 2011 election campaign, where she did almost all the television debates normally done by the party leader’.19 Within a short space of time, she was being touted as in line to become the DA’s first black leader and successor to Zille. She seemingly saw herself in that role and decided to compete against Athol Trollip to become the DA’s leader in parliament in a caucus election in October 2011. Zille sought to discourage her on grounds of inexperience and hopes that Ramphele would fill the position. But once Mazibuko decided to go ahead, Zille threw her full weight behind her, fearing the political fall-out if the DA rejected an up-and-coming black politician for such a major role. The outcome was a bruising battle from which Mazibuko emerged as winner, with 50 out of 83 votes, Zille hailing her election as marking a ‘new era for the DA’. Mazibuko’s elevation marked the beginning of a wave of promotions of black leaders to key positions in the DA. Most notably, the Johannesburg municipal caucus leader Mmusi Maimane was appointed the party’s national spokesperson (the position vacated by Mazibuko). Most were young, and were profiled as the leading lights of a new generation of black leaders within the party that Zille referred to as her ‘Young Turks’.20 However, although intended to demonstrate that the party was changing its racial complexion, events were to prove that the strategy was beset with dangers. Mazibuko proved eager to assert her independence. She resisted the established 18 Zille, Not without a Fight, pp. 298, 334–5, 361–75; Cherrel Africa, ‘The Smaller Parties: Between a Rock and a Hard Place’, in Schulz-Herzenberg and Southall, Election 2014 South Africa, pp. 104–17. 19 Zille, Not without a Fight, p. 345. 20 Jolobe, ‘The Democratic Alliance Election Campaign’, p. 62.

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practice of liaison between the party’s federal executive and the parliamentary leadership; shadow cabinet members started complaining about her interference in their portfolios; and she opted to make the parliamentary leader’s office the party’s centre of communications (as it had been under Leon) rather than that role being performed by the national headquarters (as had been decided after Zille had become leader). The result was increasing division within the caucus, as resentment grew among some MPs at what they interpreted as Zille’s having foisted Mazibuko upon them at the same time as tensions increased between the parliamentary and party leaderships. In ANC phraseology, the DA was riven by ‘two centres of power’. The immediate situation was to be resolved in an unexpected manner after the 2014 election, Mazibuko announcing she was resigning from parliament to continue her studies at Harvard University. She claimed her resignation had nothing to do with differences within the party, but Zille’s version of events was that she had resigned because she would have failed to be re-elected as caucus leader and feared being bumped down the pecking order. The broader implication was that the transformation of the DA was unlikely to be achieved without turmoil, and that this would play out along lines of race.21

Liberalism versus Transformation? The DA under Maimane Zille had planned to stay on as leader until after the 2016 local elections, but bitter recriminations within the party hastened her decision to step down, since she believed that it was necessary for whoever was elected to follow her to have enough time to fully establish themselves in the public eye before the next national elections. She was to be succeeded by Mmusi Maimane in May 2015. Young for the position (34) and deeply religious (he was a pastor of the conservative Liberty Church), he was strongly committed to racial diversity (he was married to a white woman) and had been promoted to parliament in 2014 after having led the DA’s electoral campaign in Gauteng in the 2011 local elections. He had two master’s degrees, had been elected as the party’s leader in parliament following Mazibuko’s resignation and had performed ably, although, as Leon has observed, he had been elevated to this post without a day’s experience in the legislature.22 He proceeded to lead the party to its best ever result in the 2016 local elections, when it obtained nearly 25 per cent of the poll, and via coalition agreements was to take control of three further metros ( Johannesburg; Tshwane (Pretoria); and Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth)) as well as Cape Town. Yet his good fortune was not to last. 21 Zille, Not without a Fight, pp. 344–55, 430. 22 Tony Leon, Future Tense: Reflections on My Troubled Land, Johannesburg, London, Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2021, p. 28.

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Once the DA experienced its first major setback in the 2019 general election, the knives came out. It was not just that its national vote had dwindled to 20.8 per cent, but that its majority in the Western Cape had been slashed and it had lost its status as the official opposition in both KwaZulu-Natal and North West. The result rendered him vulnerable, and after an internal review of the party’s electoral performance had commented negatively upon his leadership, he announced his resignation as leader on 23 October 2019. Declaring that he had set out to build ‘a strong, diverse and authentically South African organisation that could remove the ANC from national government and in turn work hard in government to free the majority of South Africans from the shackles of poverty, indignity and despair’, he described how he had worked to grow the party among all South Africans, ‘but specifically black South Africans’. However, along the way, it had become clear that there existed a grouping within the party that did not share his vision. He had, therefore, come to the conclusion that ‘the DA is not the vehicle best suited to take forward the vision of building One South Africa for All’.23 Initially, he indicated that he would stay as the DA’s parliamentary leader until the end of the year, but such was the fury at his words that he resigned from the party entirely the next day. Despite the DA’s attempt to put the best possible gloss on the debacle, there was no hiding from the fact that it was a public relations disaster. So what had gone wrong, and did this indicate critical flaws in the DA’s efforts to transform liberalism to make it appealing to the majority of South Africans? The analysis by the DA’s internal review team is revealing. The review panel was appointed by Maimane and was composed of three white males: Ryan Coetzee, the long-time party strategist; Tony Leon; and Michiel Le Roux, billionaire founder of Capitec Bank and one of the DA’s major funders. Leon later intimated that Maimane’s efforts to recruit black panellists early enough for the panel to finalize its report for the party’s federal council meeting in October 2019 had been made too late.24 Whatever the reasons, this particular composition was quite extraordinary for a party committed to promoting diversity, however balanced and independent the review might turn out to be. The final report was far-reaching. Its starting point was to ask what had happened between 2016 and 2019 to bring about the downturn in the party’s fortunes. Although it accepted as undeniable that the DA had been disadvantaged by ‘the rise in racial populism, a hostile media, the election of Cyril Ramaphosa, the Twitter mob and the legacy of ANC mismanagement in (municipal) councils’, ‘a 23

‘Former DA Leader Mmusi Maimane’s Full Resignation Speech’, 23 October 2019 . 24 Interview, Tony Leon, 27 January 2000.

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series of missteps’ had led to a shift away from the DA by white – and, in particular, white Afrikaner – voters, a less sharp but nonetheless significant erosion of Coloured votes, only ‘a marginal increase among black voters, where much larger growth had been expected’ and a lower overall turnout of DA voters. It drew these conclusions from its data, analysing its vote from different racial groups across all elections (local and national) since 2000: Table 8.2: Percentage of voting-age population by population group voting for DA, 2000–191 Black Coloured Indian White National

2000

2004

2006

2009

2011

2014

2016

2019

4.9 59.1 56.5 96.3 22.3

1.4 26.4 35.8 77.6 12.4

2.5 36.3 36.2 93.4 16.2

0.8 53.7 53.5 82.7 16.6

3.5 69.8 60.3 94.9 24.1

3.2 74.6 69.5 91.4 22.2

5.9 75.1 77.3 92.8 27.0

4.0 69.7 68.7 72.6 20.4

The table in the original breaks the vote down for each province in every election and is presented without a title, but as indicating the percentage of voters overall and from each population group that voted for the DA in every election since 2000.

1

Source: Ryan Coetzee, Tony Leon and Michiel le Roux, ‘What Is Wrong with the DA, and How to Fix it’, 21 October 2019, .

It ascribed the precipitous fall in its support after the 2016 local elections to a number of specific factors, including the failure to plan for the rise of Ramaphosa to the ANC presidency, the dismal handling of Cape Town’s water crisis in 2016 (when the city’s taps nearly ran dry) and the party’s loss of control over the Nelson Mandela Bay metro (wrested from the ANC by a DA-led coalition in 2016 but subsequently lost after the United Democratic Movement withdrew its support in 2018). It also cited three particular factors which shared the fact they had caused controversies in the party over matters of race. One was the damage to the party’s image caused by tweets made by Helen Zille, whose initial enthusiasm for forcing the pace of the party’s diversity after clashes with successive black leaders had now begun to wane. She had stayed on as premier of the Western Cape after her resignation as leader of the DA, and in that capacity had made an official visit to Singapore. Impressed by its post-­ colonial development, she had tweeted that South Africa had much to learn from its experience. ‘For those claiming legacy of colonialism was only negative, think of our independent judiciary, transport infrastructure, piped water, etc. Would we have had a transition into specialised health care and medication without colonial influence?’ Given that South Africa was at that time in the throes of

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radical calls for decolonization in the wake of the recent ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ and ‘Fees Must Fall’ movements, her tweets were remarkably insensitive, seemed to confirm her retreat to conservatism and provoked an outraged reaction from black respondents. Her subsequent attempts to nuance her position by tweeting that colonialism was terrible, but that its legacy was not totally negative, served only to stoke the fires of anger. Maimane condemned her tweets as indefensible and referred them to the party’s disciplinary authority.25 Amid all this, the DA had become embroiled in further controversy with racial overtones. After merging the ID into the DA, Patricia de Lille had become mayor of Cape Town after the 2011 local election. Since taking control in 2005, the DA had run the city relatively efficiently, and had avoided the allegations of corruption which had so mired the reputations of metros run by the ANC. However, De Lille had brought with her a determination to drive the social and spatial integration in what apartheid had left as South Africa’s most spatially and racially divided city. Relentlessly independent, she engaged in a controversial restructuring of the city’s administration which, for a variety of reasons, met with strong push-back from elements within the DA. What resulted was a long-running public battle within the city’s DA caucus. Its details remained obscure, although it is known that they involved allegations of impropriety being made against De Lille. The conflict was to culminate in the DA’s federal executive terminating her membership of the party in May 2018, thereby removing her as mayor. Although her appeal to the Western Cape High Court saw her restored to the position, she resigned as mayor and from the DA the following October. The DA, she proclaimed, was hopelessly divided between liberals and former members of the NP, with the latter determined to block all efforts to transform a city still fundamentally divided along apartheid lines. Although it would seem that De Lille did have some explaining to do (she and her backers had expended much effort on large property deals which did little to forward their redistributive agenda), this unsavoury saga did major damage to the DA’s claim to good governance. Inevitably, too, the debacle had its electoral consequences. De Lille proceeded to form the Good party. This ran in the 2019 election and helped to drain (mainly Coloured) votes from the DA.26 The third controversy referred to by the review panel was one which had arisen over a photo taken at a primary school in Schweizer-Reneke, a small town in North West Province. It had been taken by the class teacher and circulated to the parents, but because it depicted the minority of black entrant learners sitting separately from the white ones, it caused an immediate uproar on social media. It was an incident typical of many in South Africa, and had nothing directly to do 25 ‘Anger over Zille’s Colonialism Tweets’, Irish Times, 8 June 2017. 26 Crispian Olver, A House Divided: The Feud That Took Cape Town to the Brink, Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2019.

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with the DA, but the party had become embroiled in the resulting furore because of the pronouncements of its federal youth leader, Luyolo Mphithi, who had joined in the loud denunciations of the school’s behaviour as racist. Tensions between black and white parents (some of the latter being armed) had run high and had threatened to boil over. Calm was restored by the swift suspension of the teacher responsible, only for her to be returned to her job after the Labour Court found she had not been given the opportunity to defend her actions. These, she explained, had been motivated by the need to give the black children access to a Setswana interpreter, because the majority of the children spoke Afrikaans. In the meantime, however, Mphithi’s rush to criticize the school had met with a strong backlash within the DA, liberal critics being further enraged by the fact that Maimane had leapt to his defence. They were later to complain that the way the DA had handled the affair had been instrumental in the drift of ‘hundreds of thousands’ of voters to the FF in the 2019 election.27 Citing these (and other) sagas as particularly damaging, the review went on to provide a scathing analysis of the DA’s performance in the election. This, it argued, went far beyond what it termed ‘the vacuum of leadership at the top of the party’. This was clearly critical, but more importantly, it reflected ‘a general incoherence in the party’s approach to the issue of race’; the ‘insensitivity’ of party representatives to the feelings of South Africans generated by the country’s racialized past; its failure to develop a ‘compelling policy platform designed to achieve the open, opportunity society for which it stands’; the poor manner with which the party had dealt with racially charged issues and incidents; and internal divisions over the place of race between those who felt that efforts to achieve diversity by promoting people on the basis of race was contrary to liberal values and those who felt that there were too many within the DA who failed to understand their experience and who were resisting redress. It proceeded to make a host of recommendations about how these different failings should be addressed. Nonetheless, its key conclusion was that ‘the leader, chairperson of federal council and chief executive’ of the party should step down and make way for new leadership – which they all did.28 Mazibuko, now back in South Africa, had previously weighed into the fracas around Maimane by stating that he had constantly been undermined by Helen 27 Tony Leon reckons that the affair cost the DA around five seats in parliament, citing a report that the Schweizer-Reneke affair was only one of some thirteen other events where ‘the DA had abandoned the legitimate interests of its Afrikaans supporters’ (Tony Leon, Future Tense, p. 39). In contrast, the DA’s official investigation of the affair absolved Mphithi and placed blame for the reputational damage to the party on its own poor communication strategy. 28 Leon’s recent narrative of the turbulence within the DA provides a racy account of the personal battles which accompanied the writing and presentation of the review (Future Tense, pp. 19–54).

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Zille, just as the latter had undermined her.29 Her statement doubtless confirmed to many black voters that while the DA’s loss of one black leader might have been a misfortune, the loss of two within such a short space of time resulted from something more sinister than just carelessness.

Retreat from transformation? The 2019 election had brought Zille’s tenure as premier of the Western Cape to an end, and she had proceeded to join the IRR as a Senior Policy Fellow. In recent years, the IRR had provided strident critiques of government policy, in particular its handling of the economy, and had argued strongly for less government intervention in the economy, less red tape, the privatization of the SOEs and greater freedom for business to tackle unemployment and poverty. Furthermore, its alignment with like-minded elements within the DA had become increasingly explicit, to the extent that following the election, one of its employees had pre-empted the party’s own post-election review by calling for Maimane to go, prompting angry retorts from within the DA about external interference in its affairs. Zille’s decision to move to the IRR consequently received a cool welcome from those within the party who feared that it would provide her with a public platform which could prove destabilizing. Even more contentious was her decision to throw her hat into the ring to succeed James Selfe, who had resigned as chairperson of the party’s federal council. He had filled the post (the equivalent of the secretary-general of the ANC) for two decades, making a point of staying in the background under Leon, Zille and Maimane. It was unprecedented for a former party leader to occupy the position, and there could be no expectation that Zille, whose fingers were constantly a-twittering, would remain similarly content to remain behind the scenes. When, as expected, she was elected to the position by the party’s federal congress in September 2020, she was back at the forefront of the DA’s politics, likely to compete for attention with whoever was elected to succeed Maimane as leader. That person was to be John Steenhuisen, previously the DA’s party whip in parliament, who had stepped into Maimane’s shoes in an acting capacity when the latter had vacated them. However, the manner of his being confirmed in the leadership again embroiled the DA in racial controversy. Steenhuisen’s rival for the post had been Mbali Ntuli, a graduate of the DA’s Young Leaders Programme who had done much to build the party’s profile among black voters in KwaZulu-Natal, and presently served in the KwaZulu-­ Natal provincial legislature. She had chosen to run a public campaign in which she had challenged the senior management of the DA, which she characterized as revolving around powerful individuals who had little or no experience of key 29 ‘Mazibuko on Zille and Maimane: “She Did It to Me and She’s Doing It Again”’, Daily Maverick, 19 July 2018.

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communities from which the party needed support. The thrust of her campaign was that they embodied an entrenched leadership culture which had recently caused a number of black leaders, notably Maimane, to resign. She would promote transformation; Steenhuisen represented the party establishment. Given the composition of the federal congress (drawn largely from white-dominated party structures around the country), it was no surprise that Steenhuisen won four-fifths of the vote cast. However, black critics cried foul, as in the run-up to the election the party had laid down rules which forbade the two candidates from campaigning in public. As Ntuli had made a point of conducting her campaign in the full glare of the media, these new rules were roundly condemned by critics as having been designed to thwart her bid for the leadership.30 For the party’s critics, Steenhuisen’s ascendance confirmed that the DA was irretrievably white, affirming that power within the party remained in the hands of a shadowy white cabal who ran the show from behind the scenes. This found immediate expression in the resignation from the party of Herman Mashaba, previously president of the Free Market Foundation, who had served the DA as Mayor of Johannesburg at the head of a politically awkward coalition with the EFF after the ANC had lost control of the metro’s council in 2016. Announcing his resignation, he declared that he had believed in Maimane’s vision of one South Africa for all, but the election of Zille as chairperson of the federal council represented a victory for people in the DA who were diametrically opposed to his values. He could not reconcile himself to ‘a group of people who believe that race is irrelevant in the discussion of inequality and poverty in South Africa in 2019’.31 His resignation was followed by that of the party’s long-time Gauteng leader, John Moodley, who proclaimed he was unhappy with the direction the party was taking (although the DA maintained he was leaving to avoid an internal disciplinary hearing).32 Mashaba’s and Moodley’s protests pointed to the deep differences around the issue of race to which the internal review had referred. These were not quite so easy to disentangle as many of the party’s critics implied. For a start, the DA 30 Rebecca Davis, ‘DA Leadership Takes Place – behind Closed Doors’, Daily Maverick, 26 October 2020. The restriction was particularly constraining because as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the DA federal congress was a ‘virtual’ event following limited opportunities for in-person campaigning by the candidates within party structures. 31 ‘In Full: Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba’s Resignation Speech’, 21 October 2019 . Inevitably, Leon’s version of events is different, arguing that Mashaba’s entering into coalition with the populist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) ran contrary to the DA’s liberal principles (Leon, Future Tense, pp. 32 and 48–50). 32 Claudi Mailovich, ‘John Moodley Quit to Dodge Hearing, Says Steenhuisen’, Business Day, 4 September 2020.

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could make a strong case for its racial diversity. One indicator was the composition of its 82-strong body of MPs in the 2019 parliament. Although nearly 60 per cent of these were white, around a third were black African and the remainder were Indian and Coloured. Similarly, although it remained disproportionately dependent upon white votes, overall, it was by now attracting considerably more black (i.e. non-white) votes than white, and its support was far more evenly spread across racial groups than the ANC and, indeed, any other party. Against this, although nearly one-fifth of its support was now drawn from black Africans, only a miserable 4 per cent of the black voting-age population (VAP) had voted for the DA.33 As the internal review had indicated, there were many contributory factors making for the DA’s poor performance in the 2019 election. Yet, fundamentally, the problem confronting the DA was how to reconcile its commitments to individualism with racial redress. Differences around the approach to race had done much to sour the relationship between Mazibuko and Zille, the conflict coming to a head in parliament in 2013 when, under the former’s direction, the DA had supported amendments to the Employment Equity Act proposed by the ANC, which strengthened existing regulations and racial quotas in the workplace. As historically the DA had rejected racial quotas as totally antithetical to liberal values, this prompted a major row within the party, leading to the party subsequently rescinding its support for the Bill, much to the chagrin of Mazibuko and her supporters.34 Subsequently, Zille’s relations with Maimane became similarly fraught over his generally supportive position for the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ and ‘Fees Must Fall’ movements, the admiration he expressed for Thabo Mbeki and his efforts to shift the DA towards a more assertive policy on racial redress which she and others within the party considered aped those of the ANC.35 The unhappiness with the shift in the party’s position under Maimane was so extreme that unnamed ‘senior leaders’ within the DA had approached the IRR prior to the election to explore the potential for establishing a liberal breakaway. The IRR’s CEO, Frans Cronje, later confirmed that the advice given had been that it would be better to bring ‘high calibre’ individuals with a liberal disposition into the DA rather than establishing another party. Zille herself later indicated that she had been approached to lead a new party, but had declined.36 33

Accurate figures for the black African DA vote are not available. However, following the 2014 election, the party claimed that 760,000 of the 4,089,215 votes for the DA were cast by black Africans. See Jolobe, ‘The Democratic Alliance Election Campaign’, pp. 68–9. 34 Fiona Anciano, ‘A Dying Ideal’. For further discussion, see Ch. 11 below. 35 Pieter du Toit, ‘Analysis: Race, Redress and Liberalism: How the DA Lost Its Way’, 11 October 2019 . 36 Hlengiwe Nhlabathi and S’Thembile Cele, ‘DA Split Looms Amid Serious

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Nonetheless, in retrospect, it would seem that she used this approach as her springboard for her subsequent election as chairperson of the party’s federal council, and that this was to signify a forthcoming confrontation between ‘liberals’ and ‘transformationists’.37 Battle was joined at the 2020 congress, when the liberals won a decisive victory. It was not merely that Zille was elected as federal chairperson and Steenhuisen as party leader, but that the congress voted to strip its racial policy of any ambiguity. Although again endorsing non-racialism, it now rejected race as a social category and indicator of disadvantage, declaring that where redress on an individual basis was required, a means test should be used to determine who was eligible. Whereas the DA presented this as confirming its attachment to liberal principles, leading commentators condemned it as entrenching race denialism.38

Liberalism’s struggle with race James Myburgh, a former DP staffer and editor of the respected Politicsweb website, was to challenge any suggestion that the abandonment of Maimane’s efforts to edge the DA towards adopting ‘identity politics’ had doomed its chances of ever winning over black voters and imperilled its ultimate vision of promoting non-racialism. He highlighted the striking contrast between generally relaxed race relations on the ground, where there was ‘a high level of inter-racial cooperation and dependence running across class lines’ and the ‘often virulent anti-minority sentiment at the elite level in politics, the state, the universities, the judiciary, the media, talk radio and so on’. This was a reflection of acute intraclass tension and competition, with racial and ideological fault-lines cutting straight through the middle class. On the one side were transformationists, who placed their faith in direct measures such as equity employment and BEE to bring about ‘demographic representivity’, terming this ‘non-racialism’. On the other were classic liberals, with their professed abhorrence of all forms of racial discrimination and their proffered alternative of expanding equality of opportunity through clean and effective government, proper education for the poor and rapid economic growth. He went on to describe how the transformationist agenda had been furthered by vilification on social media of black liberals such as Mazibuko and Maimane, this propelling them towards identity politics and reacting against ‘whiteness’. Myburgh’s conclusions were deeply depressing for the DA. First, the ideological appeal of ‘transformation’ for black middle-class South Africans Tensions over Race, Transformation and Policy’, City Press, 27 May 2018. 37 John Kane-Berman, ‘The DA – Keep on Purging’, Politicsweb . 38 Carol Paton, ‘DA Now a Party for Some, Not All, as New Race Policy Entrenches Denialism’, Business Day, 9 September 2020.

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remained strong, and even if they did not buy into it, the social penalties for open dissent were ‘vicious and severe’. Second, transformationism, when peddled ‘inauthentically’ by the DA, had no appeal to the majority of voters. Third, although both transformationists and liberals laid claim to non-racialism, their visions were incompatible. So where did this leave the project of building a party that was committed to liberal non-racialism and the longer project of constructing an electoral majority? Myburgh’s answer was that it required the provision of a ‘clear ideological alternative to transformationism’ involving a coherent explanation of South Africa’s predicament and a compelling description of the future society to be created. This might not be initially popular – but eventually doubtful voters would be persuaded by ‘the sheer force of reality and lived experience’.39 Myburgh’s argument that the tensions around race express racial fault-lines within the middle class demands respect. As argued elsewhere, the development of the black middle class since 1994 has been, above all, an engineered outcome of ANC policy. It has led to the state machinery becoming, in ANC parlance, more or less ‘demographically representative’, with black mobility similarly occurring, albeit at a lesser pace, in industry, the professions, academia, the media, civil society and other sites in society.40 However, despite many complaints that whites have determinedly resisted transformation and continue to dominate the stratospheres of industry and professions such as law, a more measured view is that they have been largely compliant, meeting demands for black advance with a complex mix of not just resignation and resentment (which is certainly present) but also acceptance of its necessity for social justice and stability. Nonetheless, the clash of the ambition of an upwardly mobile black middle class with the post-colonial insecurity of the white middle class provides a context for often ugly and ill-tempered exchanges in the public arena. Despite the value of his analysis, Myburgh’s proposed solution to the DA’s ideological dilemma around race is remarkably vague. Steadfast adherence to racial redress via expansion of opportunities may be philosophically satisfying to liberals, yet its long-term nature and implicit demand for patience have hitherto failed to appeal to the black majority. Furthermore, it is unlikely to do so in the future unless the DA simultaneously commits to concerted state-led action to drive substantive equality of opportunity which would clash with its commitment to a free market economy. Equally, expecting the black majority to come round to the DA’s liberal programme via ‘the reality of experience’ sounds dangerously like waiting for Godot! 39 Jackie Cameron, ‘James Myburgh: Liberals vs Transformationists in the DA – and Ugly Racial Slurs’, BizNews, 18 November 2019 . 40 Roger Southall, The New Black Middle Class in South Africa, Woodbridge, Suffolk, James Currey; Auckland Park, Jacana, 2016.

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From a liberal perspective, this appears to be remarkably gloomy. More­over, it bodes ill for democracy, as there is demonstrated need for a viable opposition capable of offering an electoral threat to an ANC government whose record has become increasingly tarnished. For better or worse, it is the DA which continues to present that opposition, the principal alternative at time of writing being the EFF, whose formation and programme has presented a major challenge to constitutionalism, liberal democracy and non-racialism.41 Whether or not they agree with its programme overall, no democrats should wish the DA to collapse in division and disarray. A way forward was proposed by the internal review. While acknowledging serious differences over race within the party, it reported that individuals on both sides of the debate were ‘thoughtful, reasonable and open to the views of others on the subject’. It followed that it was important to conduct discussion in a manner that enhanced understanding rather than exacerbating division. The disagreement about racial redress revolved around whether race should be used as a proxy for disadvantage or whether disadvantage is identifiable without recourse to a proxy. If the first of these alternatives was incompatible with liberal principles, then the political demands it expressed needed to be met by the party developing a more convincing redress programme grounded in DA values than it offered at present. Careful dissection of the DA’s problems is one thing. Overcoming them is another. There is some evidence that, out of the limelight, there is more commonality over values than conflict. One careful study based on interviews with DA MPs and senior officials recently concluded that while the party has adopted a more pro-market stance to both the management of the economy and the provision of social services than the ANC, it leans towards an ‘egalitarian liberalism’ which places greater emphasis upon positive than negative liberty, and has embraced a far more activist role for the state than in countries where liberalism first developed.42 However, whether this provides a platform for the DA to arrive at sufficient agreement over how to tackle racial disadvantage and sell its programme to black voters, without further losing white voters to the right, remains deeply uncertain. Indeed, the results of recent elections suggest 41 Benjamin Roberts, ‘The Economic Freedom Fighters: Authoritarian or Democratic Contestant?’, in Schulz Herzenberg and Southall, Election 2019, pp. 97–112; Sithembile Mbete, ‘The Economic Freedom Fighters: South Africa’s Turn towards Populism’, Journal of African Elections, 14, 1, 2015, pp. 35–59. 42 Courtney Hallink, ‘Promoting Liberalism in Post-apartheid South Africa: How Liberal Politicians in the Democratic Alliance approach Social Welfare’, Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, Working Paper, 2019 .

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that this is more likely to fail than to succeed. Trapped by South Africa’s racial dilemma, it appears destined to remain a party for minorities, leaving black liberals to complain that there is no room for them in the DA.43 It should not be concluded from this that the DA cannot and will not continue to play an important role in South African politics. Yet it does confirm that it is incapable of unseating the ANC on its own. Nonetheless, it continues to represent a powerful bloc of opinion. Today, we are regularly told, the longtime electoral decline of the ANC is pointing to a future of coalition politics.44 If this is so, then the DA’s task and best hope for non-racialism is to ensure that it represents a political force which no coalition capable of displacing the ANC can do without.

43 Justice Malala, ‘Black Middle Class Voters have Nowhere to Go’, BusinessLive Premium, 27 August 2020 . 44 Jan-Jan Joubert, Who Will Rule in 2019? Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2018.

9 Afrikaner Politics after Apartheid Van der Westhuizen argues that a sea-change took place in Afrikaner attitudes after 1994 as a result of the attraction of Afrikaners’ to ‘global values such as materialism and consumerism’. The steady upward rise of Afrikaners into the middle class had worked to ‘unstitch’ the ‘multi-classed Afrikaner nationalist alliance’, and now the ANC’s adoption of a predominantly neo-liberal framework under Mandela and Mbeki was to prove ‘the best possible antidote to Afrikaner ethnic mobilization’. Despite their initial worries, Afrikaners were to prosper along with other white South Africans following the advent of democracy.1 This provides a starting point for considering how Afrikaners have responded to the change in political regime.

The Afrikaner elite and middle class after 1994 The Afrikaner capitalist elite was well placed to take full advantage of the ANC government’s pro-business policies. Afrikaner companies proceeded to extend their reach across the African continent and numerous countries across the world. Notable beneficiaries included Nasionale Pers, formerly a close ally of the NP, which by the early 2000s had become the largest media company (Naspers) in Africa and acquired extensive assets in Asia, Europe and Latin America. By this time, too, Gencor – the descendant of Anglo-American’s sale of General Mining to Sanlam’s Federal Mynbou in 1964 – had become BHP Billiton, ‘the largest mining company in the world’, having listed on the London Stock Exchange.2 Yet even their performance was to be outshone by Johann Rupert’s Remgro. Carved out of Rembrandt, a tobacco company originally formed in the 1940s when Rupert’s father purchased shares in the cigarette company Rothman’s International, Remgro enjoyed explosive growth after 1993, acquiring major interests in healthcare, banking, insurance, food, liquor and infrastructure 1 2

Van der Westhuizen, White Power and the Rise and Fall of the National Party, Cape Town, Zebra Press, 2007, p. 320. Van der Westhuizen, White Power, pp. 319–20.

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to become the largest of the huge conglomerates at the summit of South Africa’s corporate hierarchy by 2015.3 Rebecca Davies has added detail about how Afrikaner capital repositioned itself for entry into the global economy and how it continued to merge seamlessly with both ‘English’ and foreign capital; how it steadily expanded across the entire spectrum of the economy, from media and technology through to mining, banking, healthcare, finance and retail, buoyed by mutual shareholdings and cross-memberships of company boards; how Afrikaners now feature ever more prominently among a super-rich corporate elite; and how Afrikaner capital embraced the political imperatives of ‘transformation’, aligned with ANC ‘comrade capitalists’, forged broadly collaborative connections with the new black political elite.4 Although in the process Afrikaner capital has become a less coherent bloc, du Toit has demonstrated that many companies which were founded or are controlled by Afrikaner businessmen are still rooted in the university town of Stellenbosch, which is steeped in Afrikaner cultural and political history.5 The more typical Afrikaner occupies a more modest place in the social hierarchy. It is well established that Afrikaners experienced high rates of upward mobility under NP rule and that by 1994 the large majority had become ‘middle class’. Thereafter, the story becomes less clear. First comes the statement that under ANC rule there has been a steady de-racialization of the higher-income groups, as increasing numbers of black South Africans have reaped the rewards of equity employment and BEE.6 Second comes mention of the fact that although white comparative advantage in income terms over other racial groups has steadily diminished, white (hence Afrikaner) incomes continued to grow throughout 3

4 5 6

Tebohu Bosiu, Nicholas Nhundu, Anthea Paelo, Mmamoletji Oniccah Thosago and Thando Selaelo Vilakazi, ‘Growth and Strategies of Large and Leading Firms: Remgro Limited Company Assessment’, Centre for Competition, Regulation and Economic Development, University of Johannesburg, November 2017. Rebecca Davies, ‘Afrikaner Capital Elites, Neo-Liberalism and Economic Transformation in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, African Studies, 71, 3, 2012, pp. 391–407. Pieter du Toit, The Stellenbosch Mafia: Inside the Billionaires Club, Johannesburg and Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2019. The white proportion of the top decile of income earners decreased from 73 per cent in 1995 to between 61 per cent and 55 per cent in 2000, falling further to between 46 per cent and 50 per cent in 2014. The black African component increased from 18 per cent in 1995 to between 25 per cent and 32 per cent in 2000, increasing to between 39 per cent and 40 per cent in 2014. Likewise, the white proportion in the second decile fell from 38 per cent in 1995 to between 22 per cent and 17 per cent in 2000, while that of black Africans increased from 46 per cent in 1995 to between 55 per cent and 61 per cent in 2000. See Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass, Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa, Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005, p. 306; Stats SA, Living Conditions Survey 2014/2015, 27 January 2017.

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the first decades of democracy. Third come assertions that white privilege, in which Afrikaners continue to share, has been sustained by whites continuing to enjoy disproportionate access to capital (social as well as financial), education and skills. None of this is ‘wrong’, yet it lacks specificity about how Afrikaners, in particular, have adapted to the post-apartheid environment. It is well known that Afrikaner empowerment under NP rule was underpinned by employment in the public sector. Equally, it is established that there was an exodus of Afrikaners from the public service after 1994. No longer granted preferential treatment by the state and confronted by the allocation of tenders, grants, jobs and training to black South Africans, whites were forced to look elsewhere to make a living. Driven as much by necessity as opportunity, they have maintained their prominence in the private sector, their advantage sustained by family wealth, networks and connections to industry and commerce. ‘Entrepreneurship’, asserts one study, ‘is inbred into white children’, especially those from middle-class families.7 It is no surprise that some 51 per cent of small, medium and micro-enterprises (SMMEs) in the formal sector were owned or controlled by whites in 2015.8 Despite this background knowledge, little has been systematically learnt about the experiences of Afrikaners who were retrenched from the public service, although, as suggested in Chapter 5, it would seem that Afrikaners were to become active in launching enterprises in such areas as the hospitality industry, estate agencies and retail, which have provided scope for independence from governmental control. Furthermore, Afrikaners have become prominent in the so-called ‘new economy’, notably the information and communications sector and the film industry (which has expanded on the basis of the market provided by seven million first-language Afrikaans speakers).9 Additionally, it would seem that Afrikaner entrepreneurs were quick to recognize the potential offered by the aspirations of a rapidly black middle class. One example has been provided by Deborah James, who has recorded how former Afrikaner public servants used retrenchment packages to establish micro lending schemes for Africans who were unable to access the banking system or make ends meet.10 7

Warren Lloyd, ‘South Africa’s White Entrepreneurs: An Evolution from Opportunity to Necessity’, in Leo-Pascal Dana, Vanessa Ratten and Ben Honyenuga (eds), African Entrepreneurship: Challenges and Opportunities for Doing Business, Springer International Publishing, 2018, pp. 275–87. 8 Bureau for Economic Research, University of Stellenbosch, ‘The Small, Medium and Micro-Enterprise Sector of South Africa’, Research Note 1, 2016. 9 Davies, ‘Afrikaner Capital Elites’, p. 401; Eugene Brink, ‘The Economic Value of Afrikaans’, 15 July 2019 . 10 Deborah James, Money from Nothing: Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2014, p. 7.

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Whiteness scholars have offered many thoughtful contributions on how Afrikaners behave. One widely cited paper has provided an extensive exploration of ‘backstage talk’ about blacks among ‘white, middle class Afrikaners’ who lived in a suburb of Bloemfontein and varied in age, gender and mainly white-collar occupations. Although they discarded certain visible parts of Afrikaner identity (such as ‘safari suits’ and long socks with shorts), they maintained whiteness as central to conceptions of who they were. Furthermore, while disowning the discourses underlying apartheid ideology, they reshaped them to portray blacks as incompetent and whites as under threat. Together, these strategies produced an Afrikaner identity ‘based on racial exclusivity, racist notions of inherent black inferiority, and out-group threat’ which is presented as likely to be generalizable.11 However, for all that the paper is as illuminating as it is disconcerting, it is based on a snowballed sample of just fifteen Afrikaners resident in a city which historically was central to the evolution of NP domination. Writing in the early 1990s, Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley cited data that testified to the stratification of the white population. Although the white working class had shrunk, about 20 per cent of urban adult whites still had a net worth of under R10,000 (equivalent at the time to around US$4,000). Over half the white population owned net assets of under R100,000 (US$40,000); 6 per cent had over R500,000; and 1.7 per cent were regarded as Rand millionaires.12 Meanwhile, the Afrikaner middle class continued to lag behind their ‘English-­speaking’ counterparts. This suggests that although much better off than the overwhelming majority of South Africans, perhaps as many as 900,000 Afrikaners at that time occupied the lower reaches of the middle class or inhabited working-class territory.13 This indicates that we need to be alert to continuing social differentiation among Afrikaners and how this may have shaped their social and political attitudes. Fortunately, there is valuable work pointing in this direction. Annika Teppo has provided us with a study of Afrikaners in the suburb of Ruyterwacht in Cape Town. Established in the late 1930s by an Afrikaner-controlled Citizens’ Housing League, it was dedicated to improving the housing of poor Afrikaners and enabling them to live a middle-class lifestyle. When change came in 1994, it represented a major threat. No longer could they expect support from government, as they were better off than most South Africans, and many of the official support systems that had previously helped them, such as child maintenance 11 12 13

Cornel Verwey and Michael Quayle, ‘Whiteness, Racism and Afrikaner Identity in Post-apartheid South Africa, African Affairs, 111/445, 2012, pp. 551–75. Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, The Opening of the Apartheid Mind: Options for a New South Africa, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1993, p. 149. The calculation is based on the assumption that Afrikaners accounted for around 60 per cent of the 4.6 million whites.

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grants, were terminated. Furthermore, although the League had given its white residents the chance to buy their houses cheaply in 1991 when it had ended its colour bar, many had by then become increasingly impoverished by the steady withdrawal of state subsidies to whites. Some had already found that they were unable to pay mortgages on their houses, forcing their sale to affluent Coloureds who were now moving into the area. Although some who sold managed to move upwards into more solidly white middle-class areas, some simply dispersed into caravan parks, Coloured suburbs and even African areas on the Cape Flats. By 2000, 40 per cent of the suburb’s inhabitants were Coloureds, many of whom held office jobs, had bought their own homes and were busy climbing the ladder to positions previously denied to them. In contrast, many whites – even those determined to maintain ‘respectability’ – were in danger of downward mobility. Although not all whites in the area were poor and not all Coloureds were middle class, there was a sense that the latter were materially better off. Nonetheless, the social changes that had come about – such as the shift of congregations from the DRC to the up-and-coming apostolic and Pentecostal churches – had not yet collapsed what it meant to be a ‘good white’. But the irony was that it was no longer just whites who were pursuing this dream, it was Coloureds, too – and often doing so in a far better way than the whites themselves. The latter felt themselves to have become even lower-class citizens than they were before and increasingly at the mercy of a black government which threatened their livelihoods.14 Their view would appear to be shared by other whites across the country who, after losing employment or the parastatals, live in modest circumstances. Most are Afrikaners, who attract considerable attention as signalling the reappearance of a class of ‘poor whites’.

The return of ‘poor whites’? Solidarity, a civil society organization which emerged out of the Mineworkers’ Union (MWU) in 2002, has positioned itself as bargaining for Afrikaans-­ speaking whites.15 Prior to a visit by Jacob Zuma to a white squatter camp in 2009, it asserted the stealthy rise of a ‘silent poverty’ among whites. It claimed only 54 per cent of whites could afford a house of more than R200,000, and the number of whites who did not have access to housing had increased from

Annika Teppo, The Making of a Good White: A Historical Ethnography of the Rehabilitation of Poor Whites in a Suburb of Cape Town, Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 2004. 15 Danielle van Zyl-Hermann, ‘Make Afrikaners Great Again! National Populism, Democracy and the New White Minority Politics in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41, 15, 2018, pp. 1–20. 14

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83,000 to 131,000 between 2002 and 2008.16 Subsequently, in 2010, it claimed that changes in racial hiring practices had combined with the fall-out of the recent global financial crisis to result in some 450,000 whites living below the poverty line, with about 100,000 of these struggling to survive. ‘Formerly comfortable Afrikaners’, they were now ‘forced to live on the fringes of society’ and saw themselves as victims of ‘reverse apartheid’ that put them at an even greater disadvantage than the millions of black South Africans. The worst-off were forced to live in squatter camps, mostly around Pretoria and Johannesburg.17 Although given prominence by the right-wing Daily Mail in the United Kingdom,18 these figures were to be disputed by Africa Check, which cited an estimate by Stats SA that only 47,494 whites (or 1 per cent of the white population) lived below the official poverty line in 2011 (compared with 35 per cent of Coloureds, 6 per cent of Indians and 63 per cent of blacks). However, it was admitted that Stats SA might well have underestimated the levels of poverty, as researchers at the University of Cape Town had calculated that the poverty line should have been set at a higher level of income than the government agency had allowed for. If this level had been used, the estimated number of whites living in poverty would have been increased to 82,573 (or just 1.8 per cent of whites, compared to 73 per cent of blacks).19 The claim most often advanced on behalf of these new ‘poor whites’ is that they are the casualties of affirmative action. ‘Your policies’, averred FF MP Anton Alberts when he clashed with Jacob Zuma in parliament in 2013, ‘[are] impoverishing whites’ and ‘creating new victims’, an assertion which the president robustly denied. Zuma’s response was that the issue of poor whites was not a new one, but the difference now was that the government looked after all citizens equally, whereas in the past, interventions to alleviate poverty had been targeted only at unskilled whites.20 Both sides of the argument had a case to make. During the latter years of apartheid, there had been a steady reduction in the discriminatory pension payments made to the elderly, and the difference had been totally abolished after the ANC took power, equalizing payments for all. Payments were means tested 16 ‘Zuma to Re-visit Poor Whites’, News 24, 16 July 2009. 17 ‘Growing Numbers of Poor Whites in South Africa’, Business Report, 26 March 2010. 18 ‘The WHITE Ghettos That Blight South Africa’, Mail Online, 4 October 2016 . 19 ‘Mail Online’s Claim of 400 000 Poor Whites in South Africa Incorrect’, Africa Check, 19 April 2019 . 20 ‘Zuma, FFPlus Clash on Poor Whites’, 20 March 2013 .

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not merely by income but by an income value being assigned to assets, resulting in the exclusion of most white recipients.21 At the same time, affirmative action may have contributed to an increase in white unemployment, which was up to 4.9 per cent in 2005.22 Yet Zuma was correct to point out that unemployment and poverty levels were far worse among black South Africans, that there was no moral case to be made for racial discrimination and that the very poorest whites continue to be eligible for social grants of one kind and another. Studies indicate that today’s ‘poor whites’ continue to have access to some degree of social and racial capital which brings them benefits and opportunities not available to most poor black people. The images of white poverty which find their way into the media are used as a tool for mobilizing sympathy and generating efforts to relieve their plight. These are spearheaded by Solidarity’s South African Family Relief Project, whose sole purpose is to alleviate poverty among whites.23 It is only the foremost among other organizations, often directly or indirectly associated with the DRC, whose work is devoted to white welfare. Although in contrast to Solidarity, the DRC’s work is not usually explicitly dedicated to assisting only whites, that is largely what it does.24 These organizations present themselves as championing the interests of ‘oppressed’ whites suffering from post-apartheid attempts at redress. This view is largely upheld by those they help. Unlike most middle-class Afrikaners, their racism is more likely to be explicit, and they exhibit a clear nostalgia for apartheid, mythologized as a moment when Afrikaners were able to stand together. This should remind us that although political attitudes and identities are not a direct product of material conditions, there is likely to be a strong correlation between socio-economic conditions and political outlook. This is likely to hold for Afrikaners as much as for any other demographic category.

21 Stephen Devereux, ‘Social Pensions in South Africa in the Twentieth Century’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 33, 3, 2007, pp. 539–60. 22 Rulof Burger and Ingrid Woolard, ‘The State of the Labour Market in South Africa after the First Decade of Democracy’, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town, Working Paper 133, 2005, p. 11. They also recorded an unemployment rate of 10.3 per cent among whites in 2008 but felt the sharp rise since 2005 was implausible and likely a result of the difficulty of sampling whites across surveys. 23 See the Solidarity website, . 24 Michelle Peens and Bernard Dubbeld, ‘Troubled Transformation: Whites, Welfare and “Reverse-Racism” in Contemporary Newcastle’, Diversities, 15, 2, 2013, pp. 7–22 track the work of three such organizations: the Christelike Maatskaplike Dens, which helps only members of the DRC, and two closely linked bodies, the Morester Children’s Home and Rapha (a half-way house for the homeless in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal).

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Retreat or engagement? Afrikaner responses to democracy How Afrikaners have fared economically since 1994 provides only a partial guide to how they have responded to democracy. While common sense would dictate that those who have prospered will be more accepting of changed realities and those who are threatened by downward mobility will be more resistant, Afrikaners across the different class and socio-economic levels have reacted in ways that are both shared and different. As elaborated by Rebecca Davies, Afrikaners differ greatly among themselves about what it means to be ‘an Afrikaner’ today.25 However, what is shared is an awareness of the burden of history that being an Afrikaner entails: how apartheid led to Afrikaners being globally pilloried as racists and identified with the atrocities committed by the apartheid regime. It has been said that as a result, Afrikaner identities have ‘lost their moorings’, with those who choose to associate with the term and those who are simply associated with it by virtue of language or culture being condemned to share their history and to work out how this shapes their present attitudes.26 Jonathan Jansen has done more than most in attempting to unravel the complexity of post-1994 Afrikanerdom. He has referred to Afrikaner identity as being ineluctably transmitted from one generation to another, from parents to children, via multiple and complex variables (education, religion, politics, story-telling, songs, culture, etc.) which he has summarized as Knowledge in the Blood.27 Such transmission is more direct within the Afrikaner community than in most other South African communities. It has been deeply shaped by folk memories of the past and of the frontier, of the Anglo-Boer war, the concentration camps and British oppression, the broad themes being those of ‘conquest and humiliation, struggle and survival, suffering and resilience, poverty and recovery, black and white’. Although the more outrageous themes of this history are no longer trumpeted in public spaces, ‘the underlying ideological and emotional attachments remain more or less undisturbed’.28 In short, Knowledge in the Blood is ‘emotional knowledge’, and thereby difficult to escape from, even if the individual wishes to be rid of it. Even so, individuals are going to react differently to the realities they face and the demands made on them by democracy. One way of conceptualizing these is to adapt a categorization originally put forward by Theuns Eloff, one of the delegation that met with the ANC in Rebecca Davies, Afrikaners in the New South Africa: Identity Politics in the New South Africa, London, New York, I.B. Taurus, 2009, p. 137. 26 T.M. Blaser, Afrikaner Identity after Nationalism: Young Afrikaners and the ‘New’ South Africa, PhD thesis, Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand, 2007, p. 120. 27 Jonathan Jansen, Knowledge in the Blood: Confronting Race and the Apartheid Past, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2009. 28 Jansen, Knowledge in the Blood, p. 261. 25

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Senegal in 1987. This enables us to distinguish between armed opposers, who actively combat the ANC government; passive resisters, who withdraw from the new democracy; inclusive proponents, who identify with democracy and attempts at reconciliation; and active proponents, who use democratic rights to engage with the government in defence of Afrikaner and minority rights.29 Although these categories are by no means watertight, and although individuals probably shift between one and another, they provide a useful way of conceptualizing the different ways in which Afrikaners have responded to democracy.

Armed opposers The threat which the right wing presented to the negotiations process was negated by two major moments. The first was the defeat of the CP in de Klerk’s referendum in 1993, making it plain it could not win power at the polls. It then resolved to fight for Afrikaner self-determination in a sovereign homeland. Thereafter, via a series of convoluted twists and turns, it entered a defensive alliance with three homeland leaders (Mangosuthu Buthelezi of KwaZulu-­Natal, Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana and Oupa Gqozo of the Ciskei) via the foundation of the Concerned South Africans Group (Cosag), whereby it sought to counter bilateral negotiations between the NP and ANC by arguing for a South African confederacy along largely ethnic lines. The second moment was the decision in March 1994 of General Constand Viljoen, the leader of the Afrikaner Volksfront [Afrikaner People’s Front] (AVF), which had threatened armed secession, to form a political party, the FF, to participate in the April 1994 election. Under Viljoen, the retired head of the SADF, the AVF had brought Cosag and some twenty-odd right-wing groups into alliance in 1993, many of whom were willing to take up arms in support of the creation of an Afrikaner homeland. Its backbone was provided by rural Afrikaner men organized in the SADF’s Commando units (officially the Territorial Reserve Force System), as well as extensive backing within the police, putting muscle behind Cosag by threatening a right-wing secession.30 Viljoen had also had the support of paramilitary forces which had sprung up to the right of the CP. Formed to combat black majority rule, they largely operated outside institutional politics, openly propagated racism, frequently broke the law and had no misgivings about using violence. In 1990, there were over 20 such paramilitary groups with a combined membership of over 18,000 and a fur29 Theuns Eloff, Wat Nou Suid-Afrika? Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2016, pp. 219–21. I have changed his category of ‘active opposers’ to the more accurate ‘armed opposers’. 30 Key sources are Johann van Rooyen, Hard Right: The New White Power in South Africa, London, I.B. Taurus; New York, St Martin’s Press, 1994; and Martin Schonteich and Henri Boshoff, ‘Volk’, Faith and Fatherland: The Security Threat Posed by the White Right, Pretoria, Institute for Security Studies, 2003.

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ther 30 fundamentalist organizations, their number mushrooming to almost 300 by 1993. The most prominent among them was the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging [Afrikaner Resistance Movement] (AWB), which claimed around 15,000 members in 1993, and a larger number of active supporters and tacit sympathizers. They warned that majority rule would plunge the country into war, and perpetrated numerous acts of violence in a bid to disrupt the ongoing negotiations.31 The AVF posed a realistic threat of successfully defending a secessionist region in the northern and eastern Transvaal. Yet it was to be undone by an act of tragi-comedy. In March 1994, Viljoen had led an effort by a 1,500-strong AVF militia to protect the Bophuthatswana government from mutiny within its army and demonstrations by ANC supporters against Mangope’s refusal to participate in the forthcoming democratic elections. Armed with rifles provided by the Bophuthatswana Defence Force (BDF), it assembled outside the homeland’s capital, Mmabatho, ready to intervene when called upon. However, its operation was thwarted by the arrival of some 500 members of the AWB who went on a rampage, firing at BDF troops and civilians. In response, the BDF turned on the AWB and, in an incident which received global coverage, fired upon an AWB vehicle. Brought to a halt, its wounded occupants were executed in front of the rolling cameras. This led to the rapid withdrawal of Mangope’s protectors, the leader’s reluctant decision to allow participation in the elections and his almost immediate deposition from power by the SADF. ‘This one event arguably dealt a decisive blow to the morale of the rank and file of the white right throughout the country’.32 When the ANC conceded that it would be prepared to negotiate a homeland for Afrikaners after the election, Viljoen had broken with the AVF and, by forming the FF, provided a home for white conservatives in the forthcoming poll. Accused of betrayal by the far right, he argued that a strong showing in the election would place a volkstaat [people’s state] on the agenda and that pursuing the right’s goal within the system offered more than a war it would surely lose.33 Viljoen’s decision to participate in the polls was hailed as dousing any further significant threat of armed resistance by the far right (although the AWB launched a series of bomb attacks upon taxi ranks, bus stops and terminuses where black people congregated, as well as at polling stations, ANC and NP party offices and the Johannesburg International Airport, killing two dozen people and injuring as many as two hundred others).34 Yet such extremism 31 Van Rooyen, Hard Right, pp. 91–8. 32 Schonteich and Boshoff, ‘Volk’, Faith and Fatherland, p. 27. 33 Doreen Atkinson, ‘Brokering a Miracle: The Multiparty Negotiating Forum’, in Steven Friedman and Doreen Atkinson (eds), The Small Miracle: South Africa’s Negotiated Settlement, South African Review 7, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1994, pp. 35–6. 34 Schonteich and Boshoff, ‘Volk’, Faith and Fatherland, p. 70.

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served to increase rather than diminish the willingness of conservatives to vote in the election. The CP having resolved to boycott the polls, its support base defected to the FF, which won nine seats in the National Assembly and became the largest opposition party outside the GNU. Support for the paramilitaries had increased after the defeat of the CP in the 1992 referendum. Nonetheless, as Adam and Moodley observed, even on the right, political and legal strategies to achieve Boere self-determination had remained more popular than the ‘violent antics’ of the AWB and its associates. The significance of the ‘street theatre’ of these groups – the khaki uniforms, the AWB’s red, black and white swastika-like insignia, the foot-stamping rallies – had been grossly overrated by the media. Although ‘vociferous’, ‘the swastika-waving fascists’ had been outnumbered by ‘more honourable ideologues and plainly fearful voters in feudal rural settings or declining mining towns’. Even so, the white right was still to be feared: while it might not have been able to win a war, it might have been able to start one.35 Sporadic incidents after the transition indicated that there was still a danger from far-right armed militia which, acting independently from one another, were responsible for a number of violent incidents which occurred in different provinces in the late 1990s and early 2000s, causing death and injury. Most serious were the activities of die Boeremag, a group tenaciously devoted to creating an independent Afrikaner state. They were inspired by the bizarre teachings of an Afrikaner Boer War seer named Siener van Rensburg, believed that they were charged by God to deliver the Boer nation from its enemies and drew up ambitious plans to overthrow the new government. They made a series of daring raids on military establishments, stole a wide array of equipment and weapons and planned to seize control of vital military, economic and communications installations in order to prepare for a forthcoming conflict. Throughout the latter months of 2002, they launched a major bombing campaign in towns across the country, notably in Soweto. Yet what was to prove most significant about their campaign was that, although the police and intelligence services had initially underestimated the threat that die Boeremag represented, they ultimately proved to be up to the task of containing it, eventually securing convictions for treason, murder and possession of illegal weapons of over twenty of its leading activists.36 Thereafter, no far-right militia posed a significant security threat to the authorities. Following the fiasco in Bophuthatswana, the AWB was in decline, eleven of its members receiving amnesty from the TRC for their part in its 1994 bombing campaign. Its surrender was confirmed by its leader, the comic-opera figure of Eugene Terreblanche, seeking and being granted amnesty for illegal possession of arms and ammunition, before being jailed for six years over his assault on 35 Adam and Moodley, The Opening of the Apartheid Mind, pp. 149–50. 36 The principal source on Boeremag remains Schonteich and Boshoff, ‘Volk’, Faith and Fatherland.

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a petrol station worker and the attempted murder of a security guard in 2001. Following his early release from jail in 2004, the AWB promised a higher profile, but it was not until early 2008 that it announced it was remobilizing in response to ANC corruption, a rise in crime and recurring electricity crises. However, its drawn-out final act of political theatre met a decisive end when Terreblanche was murdered by a former employee on his farm near Ventersdorp over a dispute about unpaid wages in 2010. Although a lively sequel was promised by its new leader, Steyn von Rönge, the AWB remains a shadow of its former self. Reports of far-right groups training Afrikaner youths in paramilitary camps continue to surface in the media, the most prominent of these being the Kommandokorps and the Suidlanders. In addition, there are occasional public appearances by right-wingers, who manage to combine a toxic display of aggressive masculinity with overt disdain for democracy, a notorious instance occurring in October 2020 when a small white nationalist group turned up to support three defendants charged with the brutal murder of two African men in the Free State town of Senekal. Apartheid was always going to take longer to die in South Africa’s small towns than in the cities, and this was a particularly distressing example of the tensions afflicting a community riven by racial tensions amid a local context of economic decline.37 Notwithstanding such incidents, since the state’s clamp-down on the Boeremag, the major thrust of far-right activity has moved from the bush to the internet. Unlike the typical right-wing saboteurs of the early 1990s, who were mostly drawn from rural and small-town settings, the leadership of the Boeremag had largely come from white-collar and middle-class families, some of them based in the larger urban centres.38 It is a trend which has seemingly continued, confirming the shift of far-right opposition from the sphere of armed resistance to that of active engagement with the democratic government. In contrast, some Afrikaners have chosen to withdraw from the public arena.

Passive Resisters Afrikaners might have been ‘traumatized’ by what de Klerk – in a 1997 speech – referred to as their painful ‘surrender’ of national sovereignty, but (as confirmed by the focus groups) the overwhelming majority recognized that they had little realistic option but to go along with the transition to democracy.39 Yet acquiescence did not necessarily imply an acceptance of the racial equality that democracy implied, and one widespread response was to withdraw from the This particularly painful case is explored by Andrew Harding, These Are Not Gentle People, London, MacLehose Press, 2020. 38 Schonteich and Boshoff, ‘Volk’, Faith and Fatherland, p. 74. 39 De Klerk’s speech is cited by Hermann Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People, Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2003, p. 656. 37

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political order either wholly, by emigrating, or partially, by ‘internal migration’ to physical or cultural enclaves. Du Toit labels the earlier occasions when Afrikaners chose to migrate (into the interior or internationally after the Anglo-Boer war) as their ‘first diaspora’. Their ‘second diaspora’ began as a trickle in the late 1970s and then picked up pace after de Klerk’s speech to parliament in 1990.40 According to one source, the flight of some 841,000 South Africans (usually to the United Kingdom, the United States and the former ‘white dominions’) which took place between 1995 and 2005 was largely an Afrikaner emigration one, so that today, there are probably very few Afrikaner families who do not have émigré relatives abroad.41 Most who left came from higher-income backgrounds, were highly educated in business or were professionals (doctors, veterinarians, engineers, accountants, teachers, nurses, IT specialists and farmers), along with skilled artisans and clerical workers, all having to overcome the qualifications and other barriers that the receiving countries’ immigration laws put in their way.42 The political attitudes of Afrikaner emigrants were generally conservative. According to du Toit, who offers a detailed study of those who moved to New Zealand, ‘many had sentiments for the far-right’. Many expressed concerns about living under the ANC, communism, a black government and about South Africa becoming ‘third world’.43 Yet, whatever their leanings, the decision to emigrate had usually been a difficult one. Many were accused of being unpatriotic and committing treason against the Afrikaner people, and were to feel resultant feelings of guilt about leaving their compatriots in the lurch. Correspondingly, they were often to express a desire to return to South Africa, yet equally recorded that family circumstances, notably fears about safety and concern for their children, would prevent their doing so.44 While concerns about economic decline, equity employment, a lowering of standards in education and medical care and corruption all featured strongly as push factors, fears about violence, crime and lack of security were by far the most prominent.45 Afrikaners acted like other immigrants by flocking together when they could, joining existing hubs of fellow emigres where they could socialize and support each other and speak in Afrikaans. They established virtual links to communicate with each other and to remain in touch with friends and family at home. They created or joined cultural-linguistic enclaves, where they staged cultural 40 Brian du Toit, ‘Boers, Afrikaners and Diasporas’, Historia, 48, 1, 2003, pp. 15–24. 41 Wessel Visser, ‘Afrikaner Responses to Post-apartheid South Africa: Diaspora and the Regeneration of Cultural Identity’, New Contree, 54, 2007, pp. 1–30. 42 Johann van Rooyen, The New Great Trek: The Story of South Africa’s White Exodus, Pretoria, UNISA Press, 2000, pp. 26, 36–7, 50–1. 43 Du Toit, ‘Boers, Afrikaners and Diasporas’, p. 46. 44 Visser, ‘Afrikaner Responses’, p. 4. 45 Du Toit, ‘Boers, Afrikaners and Diasporas’, p. 42.

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gatherings, held braais and established stores that sold characteristically South African foods.46 For many, too, religion was important. Most of du Toit’s sample had belonged to one of the three Dutch Reformed denominations, and some were to join DRC congregations in their new homes, although others chose to opt for Afrikaans-language charismatic churches. In a rugby-mad country, they would doubtless continue to support the Springboks, yet equally their children would probably shout for the All Blacks, many having forgotten how to speak Afrikaans. As Visser concludes, maintaining Afrikaner identity abroad, especially in urban settings, is unlikely to prove sustainable, and will in all probability disappear over the succeeding generations.47 A devotion to the best future for their children is cited by the inhabitants as one of their primary motives for moving to Orania, the town established in what is now the Northern Cape in 1991 as a safe haven for Afrikaners.48 Constand Viljoen’s hopes for the establishment of a volkstaat after the 1994 election soon came to naught. The Volkstaat Council presented a report on the feasibility of Afrikaner self-determination to the Constitutional Assembly, proposing the creation of a tenth province, but this was turned down in favour of the establishment of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, the ANC having resolved it would never agree to a separate Afrikaner constitutional entity. In the meantime, Carel Boshoff, the son-in-law of Hendrik Verwoerd, had founded the Afrikaner-­ Vryheidstigting [Afrikaner Freedom Foundation] in the belief that Afrikaners should proceed with the establishment of their own self-ruling territory. Orania was intended to serve as its core, Boshoff calculating that because it was located in a marginal and semi-desert area of the Karoo, it would not be feared by a black government. Its founding idea was that all the work would be performed by its citizens, including tasks such as ploughing of fields, collection of garbage and tending gardens, which had historically been performed by black South Africans. It had frequently been acknowledged in right-wing circles that Afrikaners would have to make sacrifices to achieve political self-determination. Boshoff now conceded that ‘we would rather be poor and free than rich in a common society’.49 Even if most Afrikaners chose not to move to Orania, argued Boshoff, it would provide them with an option, just as Jews could look to Israel as refuge. The original objective had been to create a majority in the north-western Cape with the eventual goal of forming an independent state between Orania and the west coast, Boshoff hoping for a population of 60,000 after fifteen years. When 46 Visser, ‘Afrikaner Responses’, pp. 5–6. 47 Visser, ‘Afrikaner Responses’, p. 5. 48 Candice Smith and Bryon Pitts, ‘Inside the All-White “Apartheid Town” of Orania, South Africa’, 12 April 2019 . 49 Schonteich and Boshoff, ‘Volk’, Faith and Fatherland, pp. 43–5.

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put to the test, however, Afrikaners’ enthusiasm proved to be remarkably limited, and by 2019 the number of inhabitants had climbed to a mere 1,600. By this time, reality was beginning to set in, and Oranian citizens’ hopes for establishing their own country were giving way to creating ‘their own space’ within a common South Africa and proving themselves as ‘participants in an African future’.50 This was merely confirmation that Afrikaners are more likely to opt for inward migration, retreating into enclaves where they can be in the majority. Du Toit’s second diaspora of Afrikaners abroad is matched by a second great trek of Afrikaners within South Africa into racially and ethnically demarcated social spaces which are not unlike the laagers used by their Boer ancestors during the expansion of Dutch colonial settlement in the nineteenth century. Just as Afrikaner emigrants are searching for a new life in countries of white settlement, Afrikaner internal migrants are searching for theirs in their own imagined ‘white dominions’ where the apartheid principles of ethnic exclusivity can be reactivated.51 Van der Westhuizen has described this as an ‘Afrikaner enclave nationalism’ which, rather than seeking statehood, is pursuing cultural, social and economic autonomy within smaller locales. Surrounded by blackness, ‘embattled Afrikaner identity’ increasingly assumes a racial character, as ‘being white’ becomes ‘more important than ethnicity’, a finding she arrived at after a study of two ‘Afrikaans spaces’ in metropolitan areas. One was Durbanville, an upper-middle-class area in the predominantly Afrikaans northern suburbs in Cape Town; the other was Centurion, a middle-class-to-affluent area positioned in the suburban sprawl between Johannesburg and Tshwane (Pretoria). The more Afrikaners withdraw from shared national spaces, the more they whiten the spaces they create for themselves in suburbia. Van der Westhuizen unveils a logic which follows from ‘the adjustability of the parameters of ethnic whiteness’. The first step is to admit English-­speaking whites to a circle of ethnic privilege; the second is to admit ‘aesthetically non-conforming white bodies’ (those which would previously have been unacceptable to a normative middle-class whiteness, such as bodies displaying tattoos or nose rings). Race thus comes to override ethnicity as a determinant of the terms of access to Afrikaans ‘warmth’, even though it may take some time to accept those who would previously have been excluded. In contrast, similar allowances are not extended to blackness. Although explicitly racist terminology is not used to position black South Africans, reasons (such as incompetence or lack of neatness) are found to identify them as socially inferior and even unruly, resulting in a confirmation of white supremacy. This racial exclusion 50 Smith and Pitts, ‘Inside the All-White “Apartheid Town”’. 51 Christie van der Westhuizen, ‘Afrikaners in Post-apartheid South Africa: Inward Migration and Enclave Nationalism’, HTS Teologiese Studies, Theological Studies, 72, 1, 2016, pp. 1–9.

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is extended to Indians and Coloureds, for whom other reasons will be found for denying entry into Afrikaners’ social spaces, even if they live in the same suburb. Even if middle class, they are not invited into Afrikaners’ lives, even if this is verbalized as a matter of regret. Ultimately, ‘neither Afrikaansness nor class’ qualifies them for whiteness, not least because it is asserted that black Afrikaans speakers do not have the same emotional attachment to the Afrikaans language as their white counterparts. Afrikaner identity is also enacted through consumption, Afrikaners retreating into their white Afrikaans world through the plethora of cultural products spawned by a reinvigorated Afrikaans-language media, cultural industries and other organizations which create a white nostalgia for past Afrikaner signifiers (such as the Voortrekker Monument or the former national anthem Die Stem). This has been described by Adriaan Steyn as ‘Afrikaans, Inc’. This has grown up around the ‘panic’ that has surrounded the status of the Afrikaans language since 1994 and its determination to fight back by ‘packaging, selling and profiting’ Afrikaans and proving its value in the marketplace. Afrikaans newspapers are competitive; Afrikaans books outsell their English counterparts; Afrikaner artists produce albums and DVDs; an Afrikaans television channel, kykNET, is the most watched channel on the satellite television network DStv; more films are produced in Afrikaans than in any other language, and these outperform other local films at the box office. Yet most remarkable of all is the proliferation of Afrikaans festivals. The annual Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees [Klein Karoo National Arts Festival], first held in 1995, has been followed by the staging of other festivals such as Aardklop, Vrystaat Kunstefees, Innibosfees, Woordfees and many other smaller ones which have mushroomed across the country. Most of these are sponsored by large companies, notably the media conglomerate Naspers, which, while seeking to capitalize on the lucrative market among Afrikaners, typically assert their support for the ideal of an Afrikaans-language community which is inclusive, multi-cultural and black and brown as well as white.52 Even so, for all that Afrikaans-language commodities are presented by ‘Afrikaans, Inc’ as politically neutral, they are ‘complicit in generating and reinforcing forms of Afrikaner enclavism, producing and reproducing difference, and opening up Afrikaner-majority spaces where a compromised form of apartheid can persist’. The preservation and promotion of Afrikaans has now firmly shifted away from the political sphere into the marketplace, where its vitality is sustained through consumption. However, instead of being an emancipatory force, bolstering a post-apartheid nation-building project, the Afrikaans culture industry is reaffirming the imagined boundaries of Afrikanerdom. Consumption of Afrikaans commodities has become transformed into 52 Adriaan Steyn, ‘Afrikaans, Inc.: The Afrikaans Culture Industry after Apartheid’, Social Dynamics, 42, 3, 2016, pp. 481–503.

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a collective pseudo-­migration: a gradual emotional detachment from South Africa, its state and the rainbow nation.53

Inclusive Proponents After 1994, great hopes were placed in the capacity of younger Afrikaners to embrace democracy. They could not be held directly responsible for apartheid, and, infused with the enthusiasm and idealism of youth, they were better placed than their parents and grandparents to face the challenges of reconciliation. However, this step was always likely to be demanding, as constrained by upbringing, family and schooling, it amounted to an assault upon their sense of self. This is illustrated by the self-reflection of Linda Loubser in a study of Afrikaner ‘born-frees’: I spent many years hating everything that I associated with being an Afrikaner. I hated the entitlement and separateness. I cringed every time someone talked about ‘Our People’ … I hated all the things that embodied the Afrikaner for me. Khaki shorts. A drunk Blue Bulls rugby fan, holding the skull of a bull and gyrating on his seat at Ellis Park, his beer belly flopping over his rugby shorts. The girls at a Bok van Blerk concert, wrapped in an old Vierkleur flag singing De la Rey, sal jy die Boere kom lei [‘De la Rey, De la Rey, will you come and lead the Boers’]. Anyone standing next to a braai with a brandy and coke, who assumed I would laugh at their slightly racist joke just because I spoke Afrikaans. I wanted to disassociate myself from it. This was of course impossible, and a deeply uncomfortable state of being. Because I have a surname that can’t be pronounced in English. Because of the accent I speak with and the language I dream in. Because hating Afrikaners would mean [by association] hating my parents and grandparents.54

The psychological costs potentially facing ‘born-free Afrikaners’ led Jonathan Jansen to explore the literature about how the children of the perpetrators of the horrors of Nazi Germany had coped with the knowledge of that terrible past. This testified to a wide range of responses. The most common was denial, either because parents had not talked about the past or because their children lacked the emotional capacity to grapple with it. Some expressed anger about being questioned, others shame and awkwardness. Among those who accepted a knowledge of the past, there was often blinding rage against their parents. Yet more commonly, there was either silence, indicating a reluctance to accept their parents’ guilt, or indifference, expressed in a withdrawal from all responsibility.55 Despite the differences in the two historical situations, Jansen was to find many 53 Steyn, ‘Afrikaans, Inc.’, p. 500. 54 Linda Loubser, ‘Afrikaner Identity in the Born-Free Generation: Voortrekkers, Farmers and Fokopolisiekar’, MA Research Report in Journalism and Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, 2014, p. 23. 55 Jansen, Knowledge in the Blood, pp. 64–7.

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parallels with how Afrikaner students sought to deal with the memory and lasting impact of apartheid. It was only ever a few of the latter who were prepared to confront the ‘bitter knowledge’ of their heritage. By virtue of his name, Wilhelm Verwoerd, the grandson of the former prime minister, is by far the most prominent of the ‘Afrikaner children’ who have spoken out against the sins of the apartheid past. Postgraduate studies in the Netherlands and at Oxford led to his rejection of the belief that Afrikaners had been created as a people by God and led to his repudiation of the apartheid designation of separate races and ethnicities. He believed Afrikaner identity was to be found not in its unique culture and history but in identifying with people in southern Africa, whatever their background: Becoming this kind of Afrika-ner could still include a love of fynbos and clean, cold mountain streams in the Boland mountains, wood fires and strong coffee in the bushveld, a deep blue sky, bright light and warm sunshine, singing, praying and discussing matters of the heart in Afrikaans. But I could no longer enjoy all these things apart from the pain of fellow South Africans of colour.

His odyssey led him to join the ANC in 1992, a decision which led to a painful rift with his family and accusations that he had become a traitor. However, the pain was salved by the shouts of ‘Viva, Verwoerd, Viva!’ which followed his first appearance for the ANC on a party platform.56 Verwoerd was merely the latest recruit to a distinguished succession of Afrikaners who had rebelled against the demand by their political leaders for ‘eendersdenkendheid’, a collective term that means a condition of thinking the same. Among them were Bram Fischer, who was part of the legal team that represented the accused in the Treason Trial of 1956–61, became a member of the SACP and was sentenced to life imprisonment under the Suppression of Communism Act. Another was the poet Breyten Breytenbach, who had become radicalized when his Vietnamese partner Yolande was denied entry to South Africa on grounds of being non-white in the mid-60s. He formed a militant anti-apartheid organization, Okhela, which was intended to be a white wing of the ANC, but this was short-lived, and he was arrested and jailed for seven years. Then there was Ingrid Jonker, the daughter of an NP minister and also a poet, one of whose poems was read out by Nelson Mandela when he opened the first democratic parliament in 1994. All were denounced as betrayers of the volk, but they had all claimed the right to be Afrikaners in a different way and pointed the way for Afrikaners to identify with democracy.57 Their atypical examples return us to the suggestion that the best hope for 56 Wilhelm Verwoerd, Verwoerd: My Journey through Family Betrayals, Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2019, find page. 57 Christi van der Westhuizen, ‘How Afrikaner Identity Can Be Re-imagined in a Post-apartheid World’, The Conversation, 15 March 2016.

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reconciliation lies with the ‘born-frees’. In a blog dealing with transformation and reconciliation, a self-described ‘left wing’ Afrikaans student accepted that the principal responsibility lay with the post-1994 generation, as it was this generation which has to ‘live, work and interact in a society that is still being integrated’. He found it difficult to apologize for the sins of an oppressive political regime committed before he was born. In contrast, it was much easier for him to commit to working to address its resulting scars and inequalities (before he went on to call for a proactive campaign by government and civil society to target the next generation of Afrikaners).58 The last words go to Linda Loubser’s previously CP-voting mum and dad. The latter told his daughter and her siblings: ‘you as our children in the new generation changed our way of thinking’. Linda’s mum concurred: ‘1994 ripped everything open and those who went along with it gained a greater freedom’.59 It was a greater freedom which significant organizations have used to engage with the new regime.

Active Proponents Anton Ehlers has suggested that those Afrikaners who fully identified with the New South Africa at its launch constituted a ‘substantial group’ but were matched by others whose acceptance of democracy was conditional, depending on their everyday experience.60 This reflects a wider sentiment among whites in the early 1990s that while the progression to democracy was inevitable, the terms of surrender should protect their material interests and address their worst fears. Correspondingly, the intensity of political activity by those purporting to speak on behalf of Afrikaners has reflected the perceived threat posed by legislation designed to combat racial disadvantage, the sharp downturn in the economy since 2008–9 and the continuing high rate of violent crime. Following the détente of the Mandela presidency, this increased steadily throughout the Mbeki years before surging to new levels under Zuma. It ranges from the relative political sobriety of the FW de Klerk Foundation through to the militant ethnic populism of the Solidarity movement and AfriForum. The FW de Klerk Foundation was established in 1989 to preserve de Klerk’s ‘presidential heritage’. It proclaims its mission as being to support the constitution, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law through the activities of a Centre 58 Marius Redelinghuys, ‘A Young White Afrikaner on Reconciliation and Transformation’, Mail & Guardian Thought Leader, 3 September 2008 . 59 Loubser, ‘Afrikaner Identity’, p. 37. 60 Anton Ehlers, ‘Apartheid Mythology and Symbolism. Desegregated and Re-­ invented in the Service of the Nation Building in the New South Africa: The Covenant and the Battle of Blood River/Ncome’, Revue Angliciste de La Reunion, 2004, pp. 173–97.

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for Constitutional Rights; to promote unity in diversity through the activities of a Centre for Unity in Diversity; and to provide information on de Klerk’s presidency. It emphasizes that it has no political affiliation, promotes ‘the full spectrum of rights, values and principles in the Constitution’ and takes pains to ensure that its activities are racially and socially diverse. Speakers at its annual conferences have included Moeletsi Mbeki and former constitutional court judges Albie Sachs and Zak Yacoob, and in 2016 it awarded its annual Goodwill Award to Public Protector Thuli Madonsela. Formally, therefore, it embraces a totally inclusive agenda and is very careful to guard its respectability. However, its choice of topics for its conferences, such as ‘Beyond State Capture and Corruption’, ‘The Future of Property Rights’ and ‘The Future of Multiculturalism in South Africa’ and its numerous submissions, for instance on proposals for the amendment of the constitution to facilitate ‘Expropriation without Corruption’, on combating hate speech in the media and on language rights, are all those which align with the concerns of whites and Afrikaners in particular.61 It slipped up in February 2020, however, when it issued a statement supportive of de Klerk’s assertion that apartheid was not a crime against humanity, only to beat a hasty retreat and issue a formal apology when it was greeted with public outrage. Other organizations have been far more strident in defence of the asserted rights of Afrikaners. The most prominent of these is Solidarity, which claims to speak for Afrikaner interests and for white interests on a broader scale. Its predecessor, the MWU, had broken with the NP government over its labour reforms from the early 1970s and had become increasingly aligned with the far right, expanding its membership from 18,000 in 1980 to 44,000 by 1992. However, confronted by majority rule, its membership had fallen to around 30,000, prompting it to evolve from being a union representing merely blue-collar workers to one which represented more highly trained employees across a wide array of sectors. By the time of its relaunch as Solidarity in 2002, its membership had climbed to 120,000, predominantly, although no longer exclusively, white. As Solidarity, it has launched the Family Relief Project as its welfare arm along with an internet-based media house, a think tank, a financial services provider and various other bodies which comprise a broader ‘Solidarity movement’. This has increasingly assumed a public presence as a prominent Afrikaner organization challenging government policies, ‘from affirmative action to symbolic politics surrounding language and heritage’. By 2015, it had become one of South Africa’s wealthiest non-governmental organizations, and had a membership of 320,000.62 By this time, Solidarity had become increasingly critical of the ANC government, citing dysfunctional public services, rampant crime and massive corruption. At a summit to consider its future on 10 October 2015, its CEO Flip Buys 61 FW de Klerk Foundation, Home page, . 62 Van Zyl-Hermann, ‘Make Afrikaners Great Again!’.

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warned of ‘imminent state collapse’ and denounced the government as having moved from ‘majority rule’ to ‘majority domination’ and ‘governing against Afrikaners’. He thereupon announced the launch of Helpmekaar 2020 [Mutual Aid 2020], a R3.5 billion plan to secure a ‘free and prosperous future’ for Afrikaners, providing the support they were being denied and stepping in where the government would not.63 All this has been backed by a narrative which harks back to Afrikaners’ own history of struggle: how the MWU was founded to protect impoverished Afrikaners after the Anglo-Boer war; how it was involved in efforts to uplift Afrikaners in the 1930s; and how it played a major role in the NP coming to power. Yet thereafter, the narrative continues, the MWU’s relations with the NP were as much contested as they were cooperative. It thereby distances Solidarity from apartheid by claiming a history of independence from the state and of being critical of the government of the day. It is a highly selective representation of the past which now presents democracy as a change in regime which has led ‘our people’ to become an ‘increasingly alienated’ and racially victimized minority within ‘a majority setting’.64 This is a message promoted even more militantly by AfriForum, which was formed in 2006 as an affiliate of Solidarity to encourage the re-engagement of Afrikaners in the public sphere. It has done so by deliberately courting controversy, and has seen its claimed membership rising to 235,000, this inclusive of its youth league, which has branches at several universities. Headed by Kallie Kriel, a former member of the CP and leader of the youth league of the FF, it refers to itself as a civil rights group, although its critics charge it with reserving rights for whites and Afrikaners. AfriForum has embarked upon a wide range of activities framed as defending the rights of whites within the constitution. These have included an energetic strategy of lawfare, taking a wide variety of issues to the courts, such as the government’s alleged failure to protect white farmers; alleged hate speech by Julius Malema when he was president of the ANCYL (the singing of struggle, ‘dubul’ibhunu’, which translates as ‘shoot the Boer’); and a 2010 court bid to sue Zimbabwe’s government over its expropriation of South Africans’ farms. These actions were supplemented by actual or threatened private prosecutions of President Zuma for corruption and likewise Julius Malema for fraud and corruption. Furthermore, it has pursued vigorous campaigns against the removal of names of streets, towns and monuments commemorating Afrikaner heroes, against racial quotas in higher education and against alleged instances of hate speech (usually directed at ‘Boers’ or Afrikaners). It has appeared as a friend of the court in a variety of cases, including ones seeking to allow public schools to promote adherence to only one or predominantly one religion during their religious teaching, and in 2012 it joined a protest by a Khoisan community group 63 Van Zyl-Hermann, ‘Make Afrikaners Great Again!’, p. 9. 64 Van Zyl-Hermann, ‘Make Afrikaners Great Again!’, passim.

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over the land rights of indigenous peoples, claiming that, like Afrikaners, they had no representation in government. All such actions are justified as the pursuit of civil rights. Far more sophisticated than the traditional right wing, it has rarely shied from taking legal action against those who have incautiously accused it of racism and has itself been vocal in denouncing overtly racist language used by other figures and organizations on the far right. Above all, AfriForum has attracted particular attention for its campaigning around land rights and farm murders. Both issues are highly emotive, deliberately stoking feelings of insecurity among Afrikaners, reinforcing their sense of loss since 1994. It has proved a zealous opponent of the government’s land reform process, which, blighted by extensive corruption and failure, has provided plenty of scope for criticism; it has waged a vocal campaign against the government’s plans to amend the constitution to allow for expropriation of land without compensation; and it has decried what it claims is a particularly high rate of murder of whites on farms, its deputy leader, Ernst Roets, having published a book entitled Kill the Boer.65 In 2018, it was to launch its campaign around these issues in the international arena. AfriForum was having to play catch-up with the Suidlanders, a smaller and overtly racist group which had made a six-month trip to the United States in 2017, earning it extensive publicity after feeding evangelical church groups, counterpart right-wing and white supremacist organizations and media outlets lurid tales about forthcoming white genocide, murders of white farmers, a coming revolution and the inevitability of race war in South Africa. In so doing, it had earned an inevitable tweet from President Donald Trump about ‘large scale killing’ of white farmers, with Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton following up with promises to grant them fast-track visas. Its activities had met with the ire of the South African government and a formal complaint to Australia.66 AfriForum was soon to tread a similar path: Kallie Kriel and Ernst Roets met with conservative think tanks, USAid and Trump’s then-security adviser John Bolton, reinforcing the message about murderous campaigns against white farmers and the intent of blacks to drive them from the land. It was a message which proclaimed to the world that whites in South Africa were under threat.67 However, far more subtle than the Suidlanders, AfriForum denies that it is warnErnst Roets, Kill the Boer: Government Complicity in South Africa’s Brutal Farm Murders, Johannesburg, Kraal Uitgewers, 2018. 66 James Pogue, ‘The Myth of White Genocide’, Harper’s Magazine, 15 February 2019, deals extensively with the extremism of the Suidlanders and its international contacts. 67 Mandisi Majavu, ‘AfriForum and the White International’, New Frame, 25 July 2020 ; Liam Ngobeni, ‘Afriforum on a World Mission to Fight for Minority Rights’, IOL, 29 January 2020 . 65

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ing about a looming genocide (and has compelled journalists to apologize for stating that it has said so).68 Nonetheless, the effect of its claims, the manner in which they are made, the audiences it speaks to and the connections it has made with far-right groups in the United States, Europe and Australia all testify to its racial special pleading and reinforcement of feelings of white victimhood. All are designed to shift debate and sentiment among whites to the right, and their effect may be to further polarize South Africa.69

Where is the volk now? The key question which is posed by the emerging torrent of literature on how Afrikaners have responded to democracy is whether they have become different. Have they abandoned the ‘toxic mythology at the very core of apartheid’, fully embraced rights for all and put the past behind them to the extent that they have become both ‘Afrikaner and African’ at the same time?70 Have they become ideologically committed to democracy, or have they become democrats merely out of historical circumstance and necessity? The thrust of the literature would seem to argue the following. First, the Afrikaner political elite and capitalist class accepted the loss of political power on the basis that their economic power would be enabled to continue. It was recognized that this would come at some cost, requiring the admission of black South Africans into the boardroom and higher ranks of the corporate hierarchy, yet this was merely a continuation of processes which, for demographic as much as political reasons, had begun during late apartheid. Necessarily, too, this would require some concession to would-be black capitalists, but this could be accommodated by the spinning off of subsidiaries into black ownership, with resulting black companies being incorporated into the still heavily white-­dominated corporate structure through debt-funding, partnerships and various marketing arrangements. All this was to be facilitated by the ANC’s pursuit of a broadly neo-liberal framework which provided large-scale capital with extensive freedoms and the ability to engage with the global economy. In this, so the argument goes, the way in which Afrikaner capital embraced the post-apartheid political economy was at one with the approach of ‘English’ capital, with which its interests had increasingly merged. 68 ‘We Have Never Ever Said There Is a White Genocide in South Africa’, 702, 27 August 2018 . 69 Farouk Chothia, ‘South Africa: The Groups Playing on a Fear of White Genocide’, BBC News, 1 September 2018 . 70 Nel Marais and Jo Davies, ‘White Afrikaner, Repent or Be Damned’, Daily Maverick, 5 May 2015.

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Rather more was demanded of the Afrikaner middle classes, and correspondingly, their responses to democracy were more varied. Although the transitional agreement provided those in the public service with immediate protections, they were soon to be confronted by the challenges of equity employment and pressures to vacate their jobs. As indicated, there is a large gap in our knowledge of how this process actually worked out, even while there is some suggestion that retrenchment packages provided the basis for ‘white economic empowerment’ as Afrikaners put the advantages of their education, cultural background and social connections to good use within the private sector, notably in areas where they could operate independently of the state. Nonetheless, there was also a significant segment of the Afrikaner middle class which lost out. Upward mobility after 1948 may have brought a dramatic reduction in the size of the (largely Afrikaner) white working class, yet many of those who entered the ranks of the middle class occupied its lower tiers and had limited skills and capital. Once they lost the cushion provided by preferential public employment, their class position and status were at risk. Although the extent of white poverty is much disputed, it should not be doubted that there is a sizeable contingent among whites, and Afrikaners in particular, whose material conditions are precarious, even if they are still better off than the majority of black South Africans. This broad picture is underpinned by indications that, overall, white incomes continued to grow after 1994, albeit amid an increasing de-racialization of the higher-income tiers. However, this only adds to the difficulty of how to relate Afrikaners’ changing material circumstances to the different ways in which they have responded politically. What the literature suggests is that, overall, Afrikaner attitudes towards the democratic government were to become increasingly negative from the Mbeki era onwards, in reaction to the increased stress laid upon ‘transformation’ and Africanism, and that this picked up pace following the downturn of the economy from 2008–9, the arrival of Zuma in power and, subsequently, the growing evidence of corruption and state capture. The relative wealth of information we have about the continuing advance of Afrikaner capital is not matched by any clear indication of where the Afrikaner elite is located politically. The business elite has usually kept its head down politically, rarely entering into open combat with governments, and has usually preferred to exert pressure behind the scenes. There is no obvious reason to believe that the positioning of the Afrikaner business elite was significantly different from that of its corporate counterparts: increasing dismay at the performance of the economy under the Zuma presidency, calls for less red tape and less regulation, disavowal of charges of domination by WMC and backing Ramaphosa’s rise to power within the ANC as a champion of reform. Afrikaner capital may keep its distance from all political parties and organizations but would not be unhappy to associate with the FW de Klerk Foundation, whose positions are consistently pro-market and professedly non-political.

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The political leanings of the Afrikaner middle class may be overwhelmingly conservative, but beyond that, they are diverse. Middle-class support for the far right had largely evaporated by 1994, when those who had formerly deserted the NP for the CP either returned home or voted for the FF. Thereafter, with the implosion of the NNP, they would seem to have either moved across to the DA or joined the ever-increasing cohort of those who choose not to vote in elections. Interpreting these shifts remains difficult. Nonetheless, it is possible to identify an emerging contestation between more inclusive and more exclusive political orientations which is strongly reminiscent of the tensions between the conciliatory and the cultural nationalist traditions which divided Afrikaner nationalism historically. Both would seem to be underpinned by the emphasis given to whiteness over ethnicity, which the literature identifies as characteristic of the Afrikaner middle class. Yet whereas the disposition towards inclusion implies a greater preparedness to accept the notion of a broader Afrikaans-ness based on language, and hence political alignment with the DA, that towards exclusion implies a racially contoured sense of identity which excludes Coloureds, providing fertile ground for the growth of Solidarity as an organically Afrikaner organization, with its neo-apartheid campaigning for broader ‘minority rights’. Meanwhile, Solidarity’s proactive work among poor whites, the growing assertiveness of AfriForum and the increasing vigour of the campaigning by both organizations which speaks to white fears would seem to be laying the basis for a de facto revival of the CP, albeit now dressed up as the FF Plus, support for which increased in the 2019 election by drawing votes away from the DA, particularly in Afrikaner suburbs in Gauteng and rural areas and small towns in the Western and Northern Cape. It remains unclear how all this relates to ‘enclave nationalism’. Although the logic of this implies a withdrawal from formal politics, this remains unproven electorally. After all, it is not only Afrikaners who live in gated and de facto white suburbs, and it is likely that the DA regards these as providing guaranteed blocs of support, come an election. In any case, whites are generally more likely to vote than other communities. Nonetheless, the logic of ‘enclave nationalism’ leans strongly towards an exclusive orientation towards politics and society, and points to a de facto extension of apartheid-era ‘own areas’. Above all, it suggests a reluctance among all but a relatively small cohort of Afrikaners to embrace the fully inclusive sense of citizenship which the realization of non-­ racialism requires.

10 Whites as Citizens Under apartheid, it was only whites who enjoyed the full benefits of citizenship. After 1994, the legal and political rights that full citizenship implies now belonged to all South Africans. By virtue of history, whites retained extensive social and economic privilege, but having lost their monopoly of political power, their hold on that privilege was potentially endangered. Many would have looked to their north, to Zimbabwe, where after an initial post-independence decade of relative prosperity and political calm, the economy had gone into a long spiral of crisis and decline, the politics had become increasingly repressive and the overwhelming majority of the white population had packed their bags and fled. Or could it, would it, be different in South Africa? Much would depend on how whites chose to exercise their citizenship. Present thinking about citizenship draws heavily upon the work of T.H. Marshall, who proffered a notion of universal citizenship based upon a steady expansion of individual rights which had accompanied the rise of capitalism in England. Civil rights, the classic liberties of freedoms of speech, association, ownership of property and access to justice were largely established in the eighteenth century; political rights, the right to vote and to participate fully in the body politic, had followed in the nineteenth century; and social rights, the rights to a modicum of economic welfare and security, ‘and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in the society’ in the twentieth century. Together, this bundle of civic, political and social rights comprised a conception of modern citizenship which provided a normative ideal that promised to do battle with the inequalities of social class.1 Marshall, who was writing in the wake of the Second World War, has been criticized for portraying the historical development of citizenship in England as universal. Europe alone offers different patterns of development, and there has been a major rolling back of social rights globally under neo-liberal governance. Nonetheless, Marshall’s tripartite distinction of the rights composing citizen1

T.H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class and other Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1950.

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ship remains valuable, and, in an updated form, they provide a useful guide to thinking about whites as citizens. Following the distinction made in the work of Nancy Fraser and others, I will distinguish between the politics of representation (citizenship as political participation); the politics of recognition (citizenship as membership); and the politics of redistribution (citizenship as social rights).2

Whites and the politics of representation The settlement which brought about the transition to majority rule in Zimbabwe in 1980 had provided whites with twenty reserved seats in the country’s parliament for a transitional period of seven years. It was a concession made to placate white fears. Although understandable after a bitter war, it herded whites into a racially separate electorate and provided them with no incentive to seek shared ground with their fellow black citizens. As a result, when the results of the second democratic election in 1985 showed that the majority of whites were continuing to back the reactionary Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe of former prime minister Ian Smith, previously known as the Rhodesian Front, President Robert Mugabe was enraged by what he viewed as their repudiation of his hitherto reconciliatory policies. It caused a political breach between the white community which culminated in the seizure of white farms from 2000 onwards.3 No such mistake was made when the constitutional settlement was forged in South Africa. All citizens were rendered equal before the law. Although the Bill of Rights enacted rights which protected white privileges, it did so on a de facto rather than a de jure basis. Whites could continue to enjoy their advantages, but they were to do so as individuals rather than as a legally recognized minority. Crucially, too, whites entered the electoral arena in 1994 on a basis of equality as individuals with their fellow citizens. How participants in the focus groups responded politically to the new democracy was explored in chapters 7 and 8. This indicated a pragmatic acceptance of democracy, yet simultaneously registered considerable doubts about its sustainability. This is supplemented here by reference to the formidable body of literature dealing with electoral behaviour in South Africa to answer two particular questions important for considering how whites behave electorally. 2

3

Hanne Marlene Dahl, Pauline Stolts and Rasmus Willing, ‘Recognition, Redistribution and Representation in Capitalist Global Society: An Interview with Nancy Fraser’, Acta Sociologica, 47, 4, 2004, pp. 374–82. For a valuable application, see also Kristian Stokke, ‘Politics of Citizenship: Towards an Analytical Framework’, in Eric Hiariej and Kristian Stokke (eds), The Politics of Citizenship in Indonesia, Jakarta, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia in cooperation with PolGove Fisipol UGM and University of Oslo, 2017, p. 39. Roger Southall, Liberation Movements in Power: Party and State in Southern Africa, Woodbridge, Suffolk, James Currey; Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu-­ Natal Press, 2013, pp. 107–12.

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The first asks about the extent to which they participate in elections and how this compares with the other population groups. The second asks about the extent to which they identify with particular political parties, and what this says about their behaviour as voters. There are two major indicators regarding participation in elections, registration and voter turnout. In 1994, voters merely needed to show their identity books when turning up to vote. Since then, the registration of voters has been undertaken by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). Registration is voluntary (although much encouraged by the IEC), this based on the principle that voting is a right of citizenship, and citizens can choose whether to vote or not. Correspondingly, the extent to which social groups (identified by age, socio-economic criteria, ethnicity or race, etc.) register to vote is likely to affect electoral outcomes, which are unlikely to reflect the views and values of social groups that are under-represented on the electoral register. Registration is measured as a proportion of the VAP, which is defined by those who are eighteen years of age or older. The levels of registration achieved reflect more than just individuals’ decisions to do so, as they are also influenced by the capacity and the efforts of the IEC to provide equal opportunities to register. Some would-be voters have to overcome potential obstacles to registration, such as lack of time off work, unaffordable costs and lack of transport required to reach registration stations. Surveys indicate that these tend to be greater for the unemployed and economically marginalized, most notably young, female, working-class, black Africans across metro and rural areas. Likewise, younger South Africans are disproportionately less likely to register.4 Generally, however, whites – the overwhelming majority of whom live in cities and suburbia – are provided ample opportunity to register and, hence, to vote. IEC electoral data does not distinguish those who register and vote by population group. Consequently, to ascertain the levels of registration by whites, it is necessary to turn to survey data (see Figure 10.1). From this, three major points emerge: First, white registration levels have varied from one election to another, broadly in accordance with trends displayed by other population groups over the 2004, 2009 and 2014 elections, before there was a divergence between registration levels for black Africans and Coloureds, which declined for the 2019 election, and those for whites and Indians, which increased. Second, white registration levels have varied between nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) in 2004 and over four-fifths (81 per cent) in 2009, but falling quite sharply to 67 per cent in 2014 and rising thereafter to 75 per cent in 2019. 4

These paragraphs draw strongly from Collette Schulz-Herzenberg, ‘Trends in Voter Participation: Registration, Turnout and the Disengaging Electorate’, in Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall (eds), Election 2019: Change and Stability in South Africa’s Democracy, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2019, pp. 44–65.

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa Figure 10.1: Registration levels across population groups, 2004–19

Source: Comparative National Elections Project (Post Election Surveys)

These levels are not dissimilar from the other groups. However, third, although the registration level of black Africans has fallen quite dramatically, from a high of 89 per cent in 2009 to 79 per cent in 2014 and then to 71 per cent in the 2019 election, registering an apparent withdrawal from the electoral arena, that for whites increased from 67 per cent in 2014 to nearly 75 per cent in 2019.

Not all those who are registered actually turn out to vote. High turnout is taken as a sign of a politically engaged electorate, whereas low turnout is associated with voter apathy and mistrust of the political process. It is unfortunate, therefore, that in South Africa, there has been a steady decline in voting over the course of the four elections. This has fallen from 89 per cent of registered voters in 1999 to 66 per cent in 2019. This decline reflects what has happened globally, where voter turnout started to decline in the 1990s from a worldwide average of 76 per cent of registered voters to 66 per cent by 2015, despite the spread of electoral democracy. However, the turnout of South African voters by VAP is much less impressive, confirming a declining participation from 86 per cent in 1994 to just 49 per cent in 2019. In other words, less than half of eligible South Africans participated in the 2019 election. The turnout rate was always likely to decline after the 1994 election, as first elections after authoritarian rule invariably generate voter enthusiasm, and

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thereafter voter participation falls away. Yet in South Africa the decline has been precipitate, explained principally by the fall in black African participation, this reflected in the dramatic shrinking of the vote for the ANC from 54 per cent of VAP in 1994 to just 28 per cent in 2019.5 White voting patterns have generally matched those of the other population groups. According to survey data, the levels of turnout across the different population groups over the four elections was as follows (see Figure 10.2). Figure 10.2: Turnout of registered voters by population group, 2004–19

Source: Comparative National Elections Project (Post Election Surveys) .

At the 2019 election, turnout across all four groups was largely the same, the turnout of black Africans, which had consistently remained higher than the other three groups, now converging with them. This suggests that whereas ‘Ramaphoria’, which reflected hopes that the change in the presidency would bring about a decline in corruption and necessary reform of the economy, had only a modest effect among black Africans, its impact among all three other groups was significantly higher. In the case of whites, it may have been influential in inducing a marked increase in turnout from 62 per cent to 80 per cent (with not dissimilar increases among the other two minority groups). This might well have provided for yet another improvement in the performance of the DA, especially since the 5

Schulz-Herzenberg, ‘Trends in Voter Participation’, pp. 53–4.

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party had proved highly successful in mobilizing its supporters to turn out on polling day in the 2016 local election.6 However, as has been seen in Chapter 8, it did not. Instead, the principal beneficiaries of increased white participation in 2019 were the FF Plus, and quite possibly, the ANC, with a slither of white voters wishing to firm up support for Ramaphosa by voting for his party in the national elections while continuing to support the DA at a provincial level. All this indicates that white electoral behaviour has not been dissimilar to that of other groups. Further confirmation is found in the decline in whites’ identification with a particular political party. Partisans, those with a strong attachment to a political party, are more likely to vote. However, in recent elections party loyalties have weakened. Schulz-Herzenberg records that a growing segment of the South African electorate now lacks an affiliation or bias towards any political party, this having increased from 14 per cent in 1994 to 55 per cent in 2019.7 Again, this is most marked among black South Africans, among whom partisanship collapsed from 76 per cent in 1994 to 48 per cent in 2018, with related negative outcomes for the ANC. Similarly, white partisanship was recorded as 62 per cent in 1994, after which it went into a sharp decline in 1999 and 2004 and then rose to 54 per cent by 2015, before falling off again to 37 per cent. Broadly this would seem to track the decline of the NP/NNP, the transparent divisions between the NNP and DP factions following the merger into the DA, and subsequently the consolidation of the DA’s status as the most prominent party of opposition, after which partisan loyalties began to weaken under the leadership of Maimane (see Figure 10.3). Successive elections have indicated that South African politics remains highly racialized.8 In part, this is because many if not most white voters are defensive, politically conservative and deeply sceptical about the ANC’s ability to manage the state, whereas the black electorate believes that the opposition parties will serve their interests to an even lesser degree than the ANC, despite all its manifest failures and flaws.9 In part, it is because it has suited the interests of the ANC to depict its principal opponents, notably the DA, as ‘white parties’ in order to delegitimize them among black African voters. As the DA has found, once a party has acquired an image of being racially exclusive, it is difficult to change it. 6 7 8 9

Collette Schulz-Herzenberg, ‘Shifting Electoral Trends, Participation and Party Support’, Journal of Public Administration, 51, 3.1, 2016, pp. 487–513. Collette Schulz-Herzenberg, ‘The Decline of Partisan Voting and the Rise of Electoral Uncertainty in South Africa’s 2019 Elections’, Politikon, 46, 4, 2019, 462–80. Karen Ferree, Framing the Race in South Africa: The Political Origins of Racial-Census Elections, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011. Jan-Jan Joubert, ‘Why Do People Keep Voting for the ANC?’, Mail & Guardian, 7 November 2019 .

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Figure 10.3: Party identification by population group, 1999–2018

Source: 1994, 1999 sourced from Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (IDASA) surveys; 2004–18 figures from AfroBarometer.

Beyond all this, what electoral data is increasingly showing is that there is growing disillusionment with party politics and the efficacy of elections, and that this extends to all the components of the ‘rainbow’. It is not merely that South Africans are increasingly displeased with the performance of the ANC in government, although it is clear that, for many, this is felt profoundly. It is also that voters are dissatisfied with the alternatives on offer. It would appear that there is growing dissatisfaction with the idea of ‘politics’ in general. As a result, there are growing fears that the established political parties which have clung to broadly centrist political agendas may be displaced by populist parties which advocate ‘extremist’ policies. There is some evidence for this to be found in the establishment of the EFF, whose behaviour has been highly disruptive in parliament and whose support for the values of the constitution is highly dubious. Yet there are two further considerations which deserve mention. The first, and it is a comforting thought, is that the decline in party identification among citizens may encourage a shift towards their placing greater emphasis upon parties’ policies and performance rather than their established ‘images’. The second is that the withdrawal of citizens from the electoral arena, which is what is currently occurring, is not the same as a withdrawal from politics, but rather a reconfiguration of how politics works. This has been demonstrated, most notably, by the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ and ‘Fees Must Fall’ movements of 2015–16,

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which were highly disruptive and led to the ANC making an abrupt change in its policies. More generally, there are numerous social movements on the ground whose activities represent the interests of the (generally poor) citizens they serve. Meanwhile, as demonstrated in the previous chapter, the withdrawal of (some) whites from the ‘new South Africa’ into physical and social enclaves has been matched by the growth of the Solidarity movement, with its claim of representing the interests of whites, especially Afrikaners. In short, elections are not the be-all and end-all of ‘politics’. Nonetheless, red flags should be raised if, as is increasingly the case today, South African citizens demonstrate a declining interest in participating in elections. For all their limitations, it is free and fairly conducted elections which legitimise democracy.

Whites and the politics of recognition Citizenship studies are pre-eminently concerned with struggles to acquire and exercise legal and substantive citizenship from below.10 However, the concern here is to explore how whites have acted as citizens within a context where they have had to concede equality to the majority of South Africa’s inhabitants who were previously denied it. How have they managed to balance recognition of the equality of the many with the defence of the interests of the previously privileged few? What justifications have they used to defend or advance their interests? The particular interest here is that no defence or furtherance of interests can be made on grounds of ‘race’ or ‘colour’, as under the constitution, these are now deemed to be illegal, although the Bill of Rights simultaneously allows for rights to be claimed by groups on the basis of culture, language or shared oppression.11 Analysis of the focus group discussions suggests that many whites acknowledge the de facto racial privilege which they enjoy as a result of South Africa’s history, even if they are divided about the extent to which they are obligated in some way to make some material or other sacrifice to make amends. Some justify their advantageous position in society by reference to their hard work; others, perhaps as professionals, perhaps as activists or volunteers, may put their good fortune in life to use by working to achieve greater racial equality. Nonetheless, that many whites struggle with issues of race is manifest in much of day-to-day life, in small things and big. The difficulties experienced by the DA 10 Citizenship studies have primarily concerned themselves with struggles for citizenship within states, and this is the interest here. Note, however, that scholars are increasingly tracking the emergence of multi-level citizenship, inclusive of struggles within substates (e.g. provinces and cities) or at the transnational level (relating to international migration, and global poverty and inequality, etc.). See Stokke, ‘Politics of Citizenship’, pp. 36–9. 11 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, As Adopted by the Constitutional Assembly on 8 May 1996, Ch. 2, para. 9, subsection 2; paras 30 and 31, subsection 2.

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in recognizing ‘race’ as a determinant of, or proxy for, the historical disadvantage suffered by black South Africans have already been discussed. This is indicative of a wider contention made by (some) whites that, since 1994, they have become the victims of a ‘reverse racism’ and that democracy has brought with it forms of de facto discrimination against whites. This finds its expression in various ways, two of which are touched upon here.

Whites and social racism Given South Africa’s history, widespread white inability to accept the fact and consequences of formal racial equality should not be surprising. Nonetheless, the extent to which the abolition of legalized racism has been accompanied by the disappearance of whites’ social racism remains enormously difficult to assess and a matter of extensive controversy. The good news is that crude expressions of racist opinion and judgement have largely disappeared from the public arena, and when they surface, usually on social media, the condemnation they receive from white commentators is as loud as from black. More usually, white racist opinion is coded, expressed in formally non-racial terms, yet the content clearly implies criticism of blacks as not living up to white norms. This becomes evident in the letters pages of newspapers or on talk radio, where legitimate criticism of ANC governance often elides into implicit suggestions of blacks’ inherent susceptibility to incompetence and corruption. In part, the difficulty of disentangling racist from non-racial talk lies in how racism is defined, this ranging from views that racism is simply a matter of attitudes, intent and behaviour to those that argue that it is inherent in social and economic structures which are historically based on white privilege and oppression. The latter view brings with it the argument that racism can be subliminal, so deeply imprinted into whites’ consciousness by their socialization and environment that they do not appreciate that they are being racist, even if they have no intent to be so. DiAngelo, drawing from her American experience, argues that few whites are aware of the extent of their privilege, and when challenged, they typically respond with ‘white fragility’, a lack of capacity to talk openly about race, and meeting criticism with ‘silence, defensiveness, argumentation, certitude, and other forms of pushback’. These, she argues, are not natural responses, but are ‘social forces’ preventing whites from attaining the ‘racial knowledge’ they need to engage more productively, and which function to hold the ‘racial hierarchy’ in place. Central to these ‘social forces’ are the ideologies of individualism and meritocracy, and their accompanying certainties that whites owe their accomplishments to their individual talents and efforts rather than acknowledging that these have been only enabled to flourish because historically entrenched racialized social structures have allowed them to.12 12

Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, London, Penguin, 2019, p. 8.

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Although the United States context differs in many ways, there is evidence aplenty that whites in South Africa have a similar reluctance to confront their own racism. In discussing this, Njabulo Ndebele cites Nelson Mandela’s declaration that ‘an invisible wound is more painful than the visible one’. Ndebele went on to add a personal comment about having been patronized by an English-­ speaking white South African: ‘I have never been to gaol, but I have at times in my life, been in the prison of these platitudes’.13 DiAngelo writes that her critique of white racism is directed at ‘us’, white progressives who so often, despite their conscious intentions, ‘cause the most daily damage to people of colour’ (her italicization).14 Similarly, in South Africa, as noted by Moodley and Adam, social racism is often associated with South African liberalism, the black elite feeling patronised: ‘Status conscious achievers experience the subtleties of condescending white arrogance as a continuing subtext of superiority and implicit exclusion.’15 It is no accident that it is at the historically white English-speaking universities, which have long staked their claim to the anti-apartheid struggle and which have been at the forefront of efforts to promote ‘transformation’, that the calls for ‘decolonisation’ have sounded most loudly. Yet this is only one site of black protests against perceived discrimination, as these reverberate far more widely across the professions and the white-collar workplace where the black middle class seeks upward mobility.16 ‘White fragility’ is often registered in white complaints that while white racism meets outrage, shaming and sometimes prosecution for hate speech, black racism goes unpunished. A Solidarity research study claimed that whereas the South African Human Rights Commission took steps against ‘white lightweights’, the ‘black heavyweights’ escaped unscathed.17 Whatever the justification for this charge (and indeed, there are many incidents when black politicians have made highly racially offensive statements), they generally lack an awareness of the post-colonial context. After the long centuries of racial oppression, the critic might argue, what else should whites expect? Should they not evince a greater degree of racial humility and display a greater awareness of their racial privilege? 13

Njabulo Ndebele, ‘Memory, Metaphor and the Triumph of Narrative’, in S. Nuttall and C. Coetzee (eds), Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa, Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 19–28, citation p. 26. 14 DiAngelo, White Fragility, p. 5. 15 Kogila Moodley and Heribert Adam, ‘Race and Nation in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, Current Sociology, 48, 3, 2000, pp. 51–69, citation p. 58. 16 Roger Southall, The New Black Middle Class in South Africa, Woodbridge, Suffolk, James Currey; Auckland Park, Jacana, 2016, pp. 125–43.. 17 ‘Black vs White Racism Media Coverage in South Africa: Report’, BusinessTech, 4 April 2017 .

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Ultimately, it remains difficult to say whether white racism in South Africa is receding or merely retreating into private spaces. Yet what can be said is that, given the depth of racial inequalities, much of the public conversation continues to revolve around race, and the white minority cannot avoid having to deal with it. However, the issue becomes more complicated when whites fend off demands for equality by reference to culture. A celebrated battle in this regard has taken place around the status of Afrikaans.

The struggle for Afrikaans One of the most prominent defensive battles waged by whites has taken place around the place of the Afrikaans language. South Africa has eleven official languages, which the constitution lays down ‘must enjoy parity of esteem and must be treated equitably’, but adds that governments at all three different levels of state have the right to use ‘particular official languages’ for their purposes, taking into account practicality, expense, regional circumstances and local usage. In practice, however, it is English which has become the principal language of both official business and instruction. This has come at a cost to the use and status of Afrikaans. After 1994, pressure was placed on single-language Afrikaans schools to introduce parallel courses in English to cater to black students. Similarly, the increasing numbers of black students attending historically Afrikaans universities led to demands for them to become parallel-medium institutions. In his Biography of a People, Hermann Giliomee was to highlight this as a ‘matter of concern’, as elsewhere in the world dual-medium education had led to the displacement of the local language by English, and pressures upon the management of these institutions weakened their resolve ‘to take responsibility for the transfer of the language from the present to future generations’.18 This alleged ‘lack of resolve’ of university management teams to preserve Afrikaans as the principal language of teaching was to end up in the constitutional court, taken there by an Afrikaans interest group named Gelyke Kanse [Equal Rights]. Gelyke Kanse argued that a 2016 language policy adopted by Stellenbosch University, historically and symbolically the most celebrated Afrikaans-language institution, represented a major shift away from its proclaimed commitment to language equality between Afrikaans and English (itself a major concession). Although the policy retained a formal commitment to Afrikaans – through the use of simultaneous interpretation in lectures and limited parallel-medium teaching – the reality was that it prioritized English (by stipulating that in each lecture all information should be conveyed in English but with summaries also given in Afrikaans). Although the court dismissed the university’s claim that it was merely ‘reconfiguring’ the Afrikaans offering, it noted that the evidence the university had produced had amply demonstrated 18 Giliomee, The Afrikaners, p. 658.

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that ‘most black (in contradistinction to brown) new entrants to the university are not conversant enough to be able to receive tuition in Afrikaans’. It went on to endorse the university’s policy even while acknowledging that its judgement could signal ‘the end of Afrikaans as language of tertiary instruction’. This, it added, was ‘not the university’s burden’.19 The battle over language is merely one dimension of the wider reinvigoration of ethnic and racial politics driven by institutions such as Solidarity and AfriForum, which now position themselves as representing Afrikaner interests. It speaks to both the constitution’s endorsement of multi-culturalism and the lament that Afrikaners are becoming an oppressed minority. Yet for the majority of black Africans, Afrikaans was historically the language of oppression, and its declining status is but one marker, albeit a highly symbolic one, of their claim for substantive as well as formal equality. Their greater claim is for a much more extensive redistribution of white privilege, profit and power.

Whites and the politics of redistribution Contemporary South Africa is still regularly cited as the most unequal country in the world. The white population remains an undoubted beneficiary of that inequality. Despite something of a reappearance of a class of ‘poor whites’, the overwhelming majority of whites continue to enjoy a standard of living that compares very favourably with that of their counterparts in the Western countries they use as their reference points.20 Meanwhile, although the composition of the public service has become more or less ‘demographically representative’ (meaning, in essence, that the state machinery is black-run), the large corporations which continue to dominate the economy (the top fifty of which still accounted for 86 per cent of the market capitalization of the JSE in 2017) remain largely owned and run by whites.21 The same can be said for the large majority of small and medium-sized companies, while a government audit in 2017 recorded 19

Lloyd Hill, ‘Afrikaans and the University Language Debate: Explaining the Constitutional Court Judgements’, Daily Maverick, 19 November 2019; and ‘Afrikaans and the University Language Debate: The ‘Costs’ of Institutional Bilingualism’, Daily Maverick, 2 December 2019. 20 Currency differentials render cross-country comparisons difficult, and South African incomes often appear modest when reported in terms of dollars or pounds. What matters, of course, is what standard of living local incomes buy, and by all accounts, middle-class South Africans compare well with their counterparts in the countries to which whites are likely to emigrate. 21 Tebohu Bosiu, Nicholas Nhundu, Anthea Paelo, Mmamoletji Oniccah Thosago and Thando Selaelo Vilakazi, ‘Growth and Strategies of Large and Leading Firms – Top 50 firms on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’, Centre for Competition, Regulation and Economic Development, University of Johannesburg, Working Paper 17, 2017.

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that whites continue to own 72 per cent of privately owned farmland.22 Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of whites live in formal housing in de facto white suburbs, whereas the majority of blacks continue to live in historically segregated townships, in informal settlements on the edges of towns and cities or in the impoverished former homelands. This is not to say that there have not been significant changes since 1994. The proportion of shares in companies on the JSE owned by whites (directly by individuals as well as indirectly) is recorded as having fallen from 71 per cent in 2000 to just 45 per cent in 2010 (although, more often than not, this was owing to an increase in foreign ownership rather than a major redistribution to blacks).23 Similarly, there has been a marked increase in the number of black directorships of firms listed on the JSE, up from just 15 in 1992 to 1,046 in 2012, although only a handful of top firms remain headed by black CEOs.24 There has also been some considerable (if widely thought inadequate) transfer of land to blacks, by both formal government programmes and through private market transactions.25 Nonetheless, although all such statistics are challenged, their significance is much debated and most are out of date, it remains incontestable that the extent of white ownership and control of the private sector remains disproportionate to an extreme. Given that this is accompanied by pervasive poverty at the bottom of the social pile, it is not to be unduly wondered at that recent years have seen black political mobilization against WMC and in favour of the expropriation of land without compensation. Rather than seeking to assess the extent to which the sort of data cited above indicates a shift of assets from white to black, the intention here is to consider aspects of the debate about redistribution. I am deliberately choosing my words carefully, because this is an arena where issues of morality and social justice intrude upon matters of economic policy, and I am neither a philosopher nor an economist. Having confessed that, it nonetheless seems appropriate to begin by discussing the issue of reparations.

South African Government, Land Audit Report, November 2017 . 23 Foreign ownership of shares increased from 6 per cent to 31 per cent between 2000–10. Blacks reported owning 17 per cent in the latter year, increasing to 23 per cent in 2013 according to the JSE. ‘Black Ownership on South Africa’s Stock Exchange – What We Know’, Africa Check, 29 August 2017 . 24 Empowerdex, ‘JSE Black Directorship Analysis’, 2012 . 25 Ernest Pringle, ‘Land Reform and White Ownership of Agricultural Land in South Africa’, The Journal of the Helen Suzman Foundation, 70, 2013, pp. 37–42. 22

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Compensating for history? The problems of reparation Many black South Africans feel that they, their families and their ancestors are owed compensation for past and present suffering by the present beneficiaries of South Africa’s history of racial oppression. Black poverty is widely ascribed to white wealth, and the argument is made that the social chasm which divides blacks from whites can never be breached without proper acknowledgement of the sins of the past. The TRC dealt only with offences committed under apartheid and did not reach further back into South African history. Nonetheless, it established the principle that there could be no healing or reconciliation of victims and perpetrators without reparations, even though it acknowledged that reparations could never adequately compensate for suffering. Likewise, the government’s land restitution process is founded upon the assignation by the 1996 Constitution of rights to the victims of past land dispossession, Section 25 stating that while ‘no-one (that is, present owners) may be deprived of property’, ‘a person or community dispossessed of property after 19 June 1913 as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices is entitled … either to restitution of that property or to equitable redress’. Subsequently, government policies have sought to implement reparative policies through, variously, symbolic measures to acknowledge victims, payment of monies to victims of human rights abuse, community rehabilitation efforts and restitution of lands to those from whom it was taken away (or their descendants). More generally, strategies for land redistribution, equity employment and BEE which seek racial redress all follow the logic of reparations. Nonetheless, complaints that the government’s policies have fallen short appear to be getting louder, amid suggestions that the idea of reparations has taken second place to reconciliation and fear of offending whites. Why this is is debatable. Fundamentally, it would seem to be an outcome of not merely the continuing extent of racial inequality but its continuing visibility. Hence it was that in 2011 Archbishop Desmond Tutu was to call on whites to pay a wealth tax, telling a white audience that their children went to fancy schools and they lived in posh suburbs.26 More forcefully, the demand for restorative justice lies at the heart of the EFF’s demands for the seizure of white land, the ANC’s backing for amendment to the constitution to facilitate expropriation without compensation and, more generally, the calls for an assault upon WMC. And yet, the calls for reparation as such are flawed. The motivation for reparations is that those who have benefitted from past racial oppression should make recompense, symbolic and material, to the victims of history. Inherent in such a demand is the quest for recognition of the justice of the claim by the perpetrators of such oppression, if they are still alive, and 26 Murray Williams, ‘Tutu Calls for Wealth Tax on Whites’, 12 August 2011 .

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by the present beneficiaries of their actions, this linked to an apology. Internationally, such calls for reparations are growing. They have long been at the heart of black American calls for racial justice, Kenyan campaigns for compensation for abuses by Britain during Mau-Mau and, more locally, Namibians’ calls for compensation for colonial genocide committed by Germany in the early 1900s.27 The TRC itself involved an extensive process of acknowledgement of human rights abuses by the apartheid regime. As such, it offered the opportunity for individuals and collectivities to acknowledge their role in perpetrating past abuse, express remorse and apologize and seek reconciliation with victims. In a related gesture, the Dutch Reformed Churches (belatedly) confessed that their support for apartheid was a sin. Yet while institutions such as churches are in a position to make an apology, and while particular individuals may seek absolution from those to whom they have done direct harm, the idea of a collectivity of individuals (and in much current parlance, this generally means ‘whites’) making an apology is much more complicated. For a start, one of the major reasons why colonial powers are inclined to express ‘regret’ for past colonial oppressions rather than making ‘apologies’ is that they fear that the latter would recognize their guilt and make them subject to material claims for recompense under international law. Correspondingly, institutions such as South Africa’s banks are unlikely to ‘apologize’ for their role in apartheid for similar reasons. They fear this would open up a never-ending can of worms. In any case, if it is whites who are called upon to apologize, who specifically is going represent them as a collectivity, when whites are highly diverse – divided along lines of class, ethnicity, education and religion – and unlikely, in any case, to agree that an apology is needed? Would it be expected that some whites, perhaps Afrikaners, should apologize more than others? Who would decide on the distribution of guilt and the degree and form of apology to be made? Indeed, as indicated by Anton Ehlers’ graphic exploration of an initiative to recast the Day of the Vow as the Day of the Reconciliation, well-meaning attempts to make symbolic apologies can easily backfire and widen rather than bridge racial divisions.28 The issue of material reparations is no less difficult to address. Who exactly should pay reparations? Should all whites pay, regardless of different degrees of 27 Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, Reparations to Africa, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008; Regina Paulose and Ronald Rogo, ‘Addressing Colonial Crimes through Reparations: The Mau Mau, Herero and Nama’, State Crime Journal, 7, 2, 2018, pp. 369–88; Henning Melber, ‘Germany and Namibia: Negotiating Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research, 22, 4, 2020, pp. 402–14. 28 Anton Ehlers, ‘Apartheid Mythology and Symbolism. Desegregated and Re-­ invented in the Service of Nation-Building in the New South Africa: The Covenant and the Battle of Blood River/Ncome’, Revue Angliciste de la Reunion, 2004, pp. 173–97.

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involvement in past repressions often committed not by themselves personally, but by others? Should younger generations of whites be required to make material recompense for the sins of their parents and grandparents? Would whites who have immigrated since 1994 be equally required to cough up? And would any attempt be made to seek reparations from whites who have fled democracy for countries overseas? In any case, as one of the foremost advocates of reparations, Christine Qunta, acknowledges, it is highly unlikely that singling out whites as a racial group to pay reparations would be allowable under the constitution, which is why she concedes that reparations should be made by whites on a voluntary basis.29 But if they did, who would they make such reparations to? The government? Or particular projects recognized as appropriate recipients? And who would decide the amounts to be paid, and whether they were ‘fair’? Furthermore, while such personal reparations might have a valuable symbolic quality and be appreciated by black South Africans, it is unlikely that voluntary contributions would make a significant impact upon the extent of racial inequality. The very real difficulties posed by implementing reparative policies have been demonstrated by the land restitution process. This has not been wholly unsuccessful. Large tracts of land have been transferred back to original owners, their successors or ancestral communities, and financial compensation has been made to other claimants. Nonetheless, the land restitution process has been far from unproblematic. The authorities have needed to not only ascertain the historical validity of claims, but also (not infrequently) adjudicate between rival claims. Further, if the objective of restoring land to its prior owners is to enable them to escape poverty, then restitution needs to be accompanied by other strategies, and often extra capital, to ensure that it becomes sustainable. Meanwhile, the owners of land subject to restitution have had to be financially compensated (albeit not necessarily at market prices), as guaranteed under the constitution.30 This involves the considerable irony that black taxpayers are themselves indirectly paying to finance reparations. There is also the further problem that the very fact that agricultural land may be subject to compulsory purchase for restitution purposes constitutes a disincentive to investment in further productivity of the land in question by its present owners. Nor would nationalization of the land, as recommended by the EFF, make all such problems go away, as there would still be the need to decide what individuals and communities would be selected to lease the land, and why. 29 Christine Qunta, Why We Are Not A Nation, Cape Town, Seriti sa Sechaba Publishers, 2016. 30 Samuel Kariuki, ‘Spatial Defragmentation in Rural South Africa: A Prognosis of Agrarian Reforms’ in Gilbert Khadiagala, Sarah Mosoetsa, Devan Pillay and Roger Southall (eds), New South African Review 6: The Crisis of Inequality, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2018, pp. 218–35.

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All this does not mean that the pursuit of reparations should be abandoned, but it does require that those seeking them need to be able to identify specific perpetrators of past abuses (rather than generic groupings such as ‘whites’); to identify specific individuals or communities (rather than blacks at large) who have suffered abuses; and to be able to specify the particular damages that have been done to them. It also demands some credible way of quantifying the financial compensation that should be due, this in turn requiring that specific periods be identified during which injuries or hurts were inflicted (rather than reaching back endlessly into history). Such, indeed, was the strategy pursued by human rights lawyer Richard Spoor and his associates to gain compensation for mineworkers who contracted occupational lung diseases as a result of their working on the gold mines. After defeats in lower courts, Spoor achieved a resounding victory when the constitutional court found in favour of the claim of an individual mineworker, Thembekile Manyaki, for compensation against a particular firm, AngloGold Ashanti. This in turn led the court to grant permission for lawyers to pursue class actions against gold producers in general on behalf of other mineworkers who had contracted silicosis or tuberculosis. It was reckoned that potentially, such class actions could act on behalf of as many as 100,000 mineworkers against 32 firms.31 Other such specific claims could be lodged against other firms in other sectors of industry. Yet, as Spoor himself has acknowledged, if such claims were to be successful, they might end up bankrupting existing companies, thereby closing them down and adding to the extent of unemployment. In other words, if class actions are to be pursued successfully, reparations require trade-offs between the wrongs of the past and the needs of the present. It is for such reasons that Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, although strongly sympathetic to the claims of Africans for the harm caused by the slave trade, colonialism and neo-colonialism, believes that, for legal, political and practical reasons, the pursuit of financial reparations for Africa is not an appropriate strategy. It makes better sense to struggle for social justice.32

Social justice and tackling racial inequality Credit Suisse reported in 2019 that 51,000 South Africans are members of the top 1 per cent of global wealth holders and 46,000 of these are dollar millionaires.33 In 2017, Oxfam asserted that just 1 per cent of the population owned 42 per cent of the country’s total wealth. Three billionaires, all white, owned assets equivalent

31 Greg Nicholson, ‘Silicosis: Court Backs Class Action’, Daily Maverick, 13 May 2016. 32 Howard-Hassmann, Reparations to Africa. 33 Anthony Shorrocks, James Davies and Rodrigo Lluberas, The Global Wealth Report 2019, Credit Suisse Research Institute, 2019.

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to those held by the bottom half of the population.34 According to the Sunday Times Rich List for 2016, 174 of the top 200 corporate wealth holders in South Africa were white (although 146 out of the top 200 most highly remunerated executives of the SOEs were black).35 While there is always room to discuss how such calculations are made, the overall picture they present is illustrative of what Thomas Piketty has ascribed to the galloping trend towards extreme global inequality as the result of unrestrained market economics. Piketty insists that the trend towards inequality is not inevitable and can be corrected (or at least restrained) by an appropriate return of the ‘social state’, as most successfully instanced by the progressive role played by states in Western Europe and even the United States in reconstructing their economies after the Second World War. He lays major emphasis upon the way in which the restructuring of tax systems enabled the state to take on an expanding array of social functions, notably education, health and social security. Correspondingly, he ascribes the more recent return to global inequality to the rolling back of the social state and argues that if democracy is to regain control over globalized financial capitalism, it needs to take concerted corrective actions. The particular solution he proposes is a progressive annual tax on global wealth (real estate, financial assets and business assets – ‘no exceptions’).36 He accepts that this is utopian, yet nonetheless insists that there is enormous scope for states to rein in the tendency towards continuing global inequality. Numerous critics have argued that the remuneration of South Africa’s topmost corporate elite is not merely excessive, but a downright affront to social justice in a country where the majority of the population lives in poverty. Clearly, as now increasingly demanded by activist shareholders, the entire system of corporate cronyism (compliant remuneration committees, inflated bonuses and massive share options, as well as overly generous basic incomes) needs to be reined in, even if this will not necessarily be accompanied by a greater sense of obligation to the interests of the broad mass of South Africa’s citizens by the very rich.37 Nonetheless, it is also widely accepted that the South African tax system is already highly progressive, and the middle classes in particular would blanche at the prospect of increased taxation. In the tax year ending in 2018, there were a mere 4.917 million taxpayers in a country of 55 million people, of which only 148,300 were paying tax on incomes 34 Oxfam, ‘An Economy for the 99%: It’s Time to Build a Human Economy’, Oxfam Briefing Paper, 2017 . 35 ‘Money, Shares and Fame: Here’s the Full Business Times Rich List’, Times Live, 11 December 2016. 36 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014, p. 517. 37 See, notably, Kaylan Massie and Debbie Collier with Ann Crotty, Executive Salaries in South Africa, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2014.

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in the R1–2 million tax bracket, 34,900 in the R2–5 million bracket and nearly 6,700 in the over 5 million bracket.38 The remainder of tax revenue was composed of corporate tax (paid by just 25 per cent of 814,000 companies), valued added tax and customs duties, and other taxes such as capital gains tax and transfer duties. Even allowing for considerable tax evasion and avoidance, there is clearly limited scope for major increases in taxation (although increases in capital gains tax, inheritance tax and the introduction of a Tobin tax should be considered).39 Archbishop Tutu’s call for a wealth tax may be tempting, yet some tax experts warn that calculation and implementation in South Africa could cost more that it would bring in,40 and would in any case be likely to increase the already steady rate of departure of ‘High Net Worth Individuals’ from the country (one report indicating that 130 dollar millionaires left the country in the tax year 2017–18).41 Likewise, although there is scope for increased claw-back of illegally exported financial assets, inclusive of scams by large corporations for getting money out of the country, the potential for radical changes to the tax system which would not be self-defeating seems relatively limited. In other words, if there is to be greater equality and, more specifically, greater racial equality, there is an urgent need for more imaginative ways of changing how the economy works. Unfortunately, such imagination is lacking.

ANC statism versus economic liberalism The Freedom Charter had promised that ‘the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and the monopoly industry’ would be transferred to the ‘ownership of the people as a whole’, restriction of land on a racial basis would be ended and ‘all the land re-divided among those who work it’. However, as is well known, reality intervened. The new government had its hands full reorganizing the state on a 38 ‘These 3 Graphs Show Who’s Paying South Africa’s Income Tax’, BusinessTech, 24 December 2019 . 39 Proposed by the American macro-economist James Tobin after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, the Tobin tax was originally conceived as a small tax, usually 0.1 per cent on any amounts exchanged by one currency for another. In recent times, it has come to incorporate the broader idea of a small tax levied on any financial transactions, notably the sale or purchase of shares. Martin Sandbu, Financial Times, 29 September 2011 . 40 Jackie Arendse and Lilla Stack, ‘Investigating a New Wealth Tax in South Africa: Lessons from International Examples’, Journal of Economic and Financial Sciences, 11, 1, 2018 . 41 ‘South Africa Has Lost a Shocking Number of Millionaires – Here’s How Many Are Left’, BusinessTech, 27 June 2018 .

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non-racial basis and delivering basic services (water, sanitation, electricity, etc.) to the poor. Furthermore, the constitutional deal of 1994 provided protections for private property, while the hegemony of neo-liberal policies internationally emphasized private ownership as the foundation for growth. As a result, the ANC was to turn away from the nationalization of industry, mining and finance and land that the charter had envisaged, although by capturing the state it gained control of the SOEs, and with the passage of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act of 2002 it asserted state ownership of minerals and resources under the soil, removing them from private ownership. Elsewhere, it was to search for answers about how to address inequality via incremental policies of BEE and land reform which respected private property, while largely relying on the private sector to drive the ‘growth’ that its ambitions required. As is well known, the results have been mixed: • The ANC can claim to have brought about greater racial equality (even though this remains vast). Although it remains largely white owned and controlled, the private sector has seen considerable black upward mobility into the ranks of the corporate elite and senior and middle management; blacks predominate in the senior ranks of the SOEs; and government policies and employment have promoted a very real increase in the size, wealth, visibility and social presence of a black middle class. Nonetheless, greater racial equality has been accompanied by increased inequality within the black population, reflecting a real (albeit uneven) movement in South Africa from racial to class inequality. • Notwithstanding much criticism of ANC management of the economy, the majority of people in South Africa had become somewhat better off by 2019 (although this may have been sent into reverse by Covid-19).42 The ANC government’s policies (notably, the expansion of the social grant system, the delivery of basic services such as water, electricity and housing and the general upgrading of many townships) have seen the quality of life improve for many people at the bottom of the pile. And yet, of course, inequality in South Africa remains vast and highly skewed; the economy cannot provide work for those who need it, unemployment remains devastatingly high and overwhelmingly black, black poverty remains pervasive and people who are poor and black continue to live in the areas they were confined to under apartheid, in townships, informal settlements and the former homelands. The further bad news is that the very real achievements which the ANC government has made in improving the lives of people in the poorer reaches of the economy are now imperilled by the devastation of the impact of Covid-19.

42

Real GDP per head at constant 2010 prices increased from under R45,000 in 1994 to just under R55,000 in 2018, notwithstanding population growth; this was matched by an increase in real personal disposable income per capita from around R23,000 in 1994 to just under R35,000 in 2018 (IRR, Survey 2020, pp. 87–8).

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The calls for RET and the increasingly strident attacks upon WMC which were made during the latter years of the Zuma government were manifestly associated with the factional politics of the ANC. They were to be blunted by the Zuma faction’s failure to gain control over the Treasury, Ramaphosa’s victory at the party’s 2017 congress and his subsequent displacement of Zuma as president. Nonetheless, although Ramaphosa’s triumph signalled an end to the project of ‘state capture’, the idea of RET continued to enjoy considerable appeal within the ANC ranks, and struck a major blow for its platform when it persuaded the congress to approve its motion in favour of amending the constitution to allow the expropriation of land without compensation. Even if this motion received backing so that the ANC could outflank the radical-populist EFF which had recently led the charge for the redistribution of white-owned land, it nonetheless chimed with the wider claim, which had come to the fore during the student protests of 2016–17, that the constitutional settlement of 1994–6 had entrenched white privilege. Even if Ramaphosa’s rise registered an immediate setback for RET, the extent of frustrated black ambition suggests the likely continuing appeal of attacks upon WMC and ‘white privilege’. Consequently, whichever faction is dominant within the ANC, ANC governments are likely to emphasize the role of the state in ‘transforming’ and driving the economy. In a document released in July 2020, the ANC’s Economic Transformation Committee called for the state to take the leading role in a new public–private partnership constructed around a massive, infrastructure-led recovery and increased investment in key productive sectors, boosted by an expanding digital migration and greater international trade, especially with other African countries. It envisaged the establishment of an infrastructure development agency to coordinate the new initiatives, while pulling in the private sector to undertake the actual work of construction. It calls for an additional one million jobs in agriculture by 2030, the release of state land for human settlements, agriculture and enterprise; continued commitment to amendment of Section 25 of the constitution to allow for expropriation without compensation; greater emphasis upon localization in manufacturing; more support for beneficiation in mining; and so on. Finally, it calls for the state to better align its fiscal policies with its developmental ambitions. The Reserve Bank should become fully state-owned; a new state bank to mobilize investment funds should be created; and the ANC should use its hegemony ‘to use the state apparatus to guide the country’s development process and build the institutions and capabilities of the democratic developmental state’.43 The massive challenges now facing the government, already huge before 43

‘ANC Statement on The Recovery of the Economy’, 10 July 2020 ; Carien du Plessis, ‘ANC’s Post-Pandemic Plan for Economic Revival Set to Trigger Heated Debate’, Daily Maverick, 10 July 2020.

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Covid-19 unleashed its path of destruction, mean that it is unlikely that it will display either the will or capacity to implement major elements of this agenda. In any case, under Ramaphosa the government is more inclined to cultivate partnership with the private sector than was the preceding Zuma administration. Nonetheless, for the moment, all the indications are that whatever faction or tendency is in charge of the ANC, it is going to remain committed ideologically to the strategy of the state driving the economy, even if, as its left-wing critics insist, in practice it lacks the courage to challenge the dominance of the large corporations. It is against this background that the DA, the IRR and bodies like the Free Market Foundation call for ‘structural reform’, by which they mean the deregulation of the economy in order to attract increased investment and greater competition and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. Only this, it is argued, will provide the finances required for the social welfare net upon which millions of South Africans will continue to depend. This requires a fundamental reorientation of state and government policy. It requires the depoliticization of the public service and replacing the ‘deployment’ of ANC loyalists to official positions with meritocratic appointment, thereby enabling the creation of a ‘capable state’. It necessitates a clamp-down on corruption. It requires the state to commit to a genuine rationalization and overhaul of the SOEs, with the reform of the unsustainably indebted Eskom, the electricity provider which cannot meet the country’s power needs, at the top of the list. It requires policy certainty to boost investor confidence, most notably by abandoning rash commitments which threaten property rights. It also requires the government to abandon its racial preference policies, which are presented as having hugely increased the risks and costs of doing business. ‘Racial engineering’ undermines investment, raises prices, reduces competitiveness and forces entrepreneurs to comply with costly administrative hurdles which constitute a barrier to employment and offer little or nothing to the poor and truly disadvantaged. The victims are ‘black and white people who cannot get ahead’. The call from economic liberals is for the ANC to liberate the economy.44 The two visions of how to restore the economy are poles apart. Both are clearly deeply flawed. If implemented, the free market vision might stimulate growth, yet, as Piketty has demonstrated, it would work to reproduce class and racial inequality. On the other hand, there is little that is new in the ANC’s thinking, which is tied to a model of state intervention by a state machinery which the party’s governance has rendered incapable of efficient performance. Perhaps some new, radical thinking will emerge out of the massive economic crisis in the wake of Covid-19. South Africans live in hope. However, for the moment, there 44 Inter alia, IRR, ‘Time to Rev Up SA’s Economic Reform as Coronavirus Grips’, 17 March 2020 ; IRR ‘Real Economic Empowerment’, undated .

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are few indications of any move towards the sort of structural changes which will put the economy onto a path of both faster growth and greater equality.

White citizenship: a politics of defence? Of necessity, the white minority has responded proactively to sharing citizenship with the black majority. White citizens’ engagement in the politics of representation has much in common with that of their fellow black citizens, or at least, those who vote, albeit in a context where there is generally growing dissatisfaction with South African democracy. They have engaged in the politics of recognition in a wide variety of ways. Explicit racism in public has been largely left behind, whatever ‘talk’ goes on ‘back-stage’; whites have largely accepted the inevitability of black advance in the economy, even if they dispute the appropriateness of the official measures to bring it about; parties which represent them have sought to widen their appeal by pushing beyond the boundaries of race; and organizations representative of bodies of white interest state their case in the media, engage directly with the government and resort to the courts. Many such responses provide a cover for white privilege; equally, however, many whites participate constructively and progressively in the public arena, whether as commentators, community leaders or civil society activists, or simply as professionals, researchers or businesspersons who are simply doing their jobs. Nonetheless, overall, white engagement in the politics of redistribution is fairly described as largely defensive, whether this be middle-class activity to preserve advantaged access to good schools and the social profile of residential areas or elite deployment of political and social power to safeguard their financial and other interests. Citizenship theorists cite affirmation and transformation as the two principal remedies for the injustices dividing recognized groups in society. Broadly, affirmative redistribution is associated with the liberal welfare state, and seeks to redress inequitable outcomes without changing political-economic structures, whereas transformative strategies are associated with socialism or social democracy and seek to change structural power relations in order to address unequal distributional outcomes.45 In actual practice, policies and their outcomes often span the distinction between affirmation and transformation. This is the case in South Africa, where the ANC’s approach to redistribution has been something of a hybrid: its actual policies have been largely affirmative, whereas its aspirations and rhetoric have been strongly transformational. This complicates any assessment of the white response to redistribution, as very often this is engaging with the latter rather than the former. However, although there is no one body of ‘white opinion’, it is undeniable that whites have leaned far more strongly in favour of affirmation 45

Stokke, ‘Politics of Citizenship’, pp. 43.

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than transformation. This is not necessarily ‘wrong’: there is much to be said for the critiques of ANC policy limitations and failures. However, it is a reminder that advantaged groups in any society are likely to defend their interests, status and privileges, and it is probably unrealistic to expect them to behave otherwise. What is more important to ask is whether the defence of privilege, be it of whites or any other identifiable group, comes at the expense of others, and whether there is openness among them to that privilege being shared. The extent to which whites are open to sharing is always going to be contested, especially in a society in which inequality remains so extreme and still so highly racialized, despite considerable black upward social mobility. There is unlikely to be any definitive answer. However, so long as ownership of the country’s major productive assets remains disproportionally in white hands, there will be those who, for class and political interests of their own, proclaim the racially exploitative domination of WMC. So long as the corporate structure remains so highly concentrated and so visibly dominated by whites, it is destined to remain politically vulnerable.

Part Three

Conclusion: Beyond Race? ‘This complex South African society, which has known nothing but racism for three centuries, should be transformed into an oasis of good race relations, where the black shall to the white be sister and brother, a fellow South African, an equal human being – both citizens of the world.’ Nelson Mandela, Address to Joint Session of the US Congress, 26 June 1990.

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11 Is There Still White in the Rainbow? Bill Schwarz observes how at the beginning of the twentieth century, South Africa was deemed by its founders to be a vanguard nation of the white race, inaugurating a new global epoch in which the fruits of modernity would be brought to the southern hemisphere. ‘Such were the passions invested in the idea of the white man’s country.’ But just as race as whiteness was the means by which this future civilization could be imagined, so race as non-whiteness proved the greatest obstacle to the realization of these dreams.1 Schwarz outlines how the idea of the white man continued to play out to fateful effect in British politics (Brexit being the latest manifestation),2 long after settler colonialism in Africa had been defeated. But what was to happen to the white man (and woman) left behind in South Africa by history? What was to be their future in a failed settler state?

The relative success of a failed settler state After decades of white domination, the project of the settler state in South Africa was foiled by the refusal of the natives to play ball. Yet there was no outright triumph for either side. The settler regime was compelled to concede citizenship to all; the natives accepted limitations to their triumph by agreeing a compromise which extended de facto protections to key privileges enjoyed by whites. The outcome was a democracy which, for all its worrying limitations, remains real. This must be counted as a genuine, if relative, success, especially when viewed in comparison to other former settler states such as Kenya and Zimbabwe, where post-colonialism has resulted in brutal political authoritarianisms. This relative success has been celebrated by Ferial Haffajee, who has been bold enough to pose the wonderfully politically incorrect question: What if there were no whites in South Africa? What she is not trying to do is to make the case, put clumsily by Helen Zille, that for all their faults, colonialism and apartheid 1 2

Bill Schwarz, The White Man’s World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 22. Fintan O’Toole, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain, London, Head of Zeus, 2019.

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provided the infrastructure (roads, rail, medicine, science, etc.) without which black South Africans would never have progressed to modernity. Nor is she offering a defence of whites, the majority of whom she finds to be oblivious to the extent of their privilege. But what she is trying to do is to unravel why, in a country which has been ruled by a black majority government for over two decades, the ‘born-free’ generation of blacks feels that it is in chains. Everywhere she turns, ‘a generation born free is talking as if it is at once obsessed by and imprisoned by whiteness and white privilege’, yet to her ear, this sounds as if whites are a majority in power. Even her own generation of black people, which came of age during the struggles of the 1980s, seems to have replaced its position on non-racialism with a simmering resentment about perceived white cultural and financial domination that has replaced formal apartheid.3 Haffajee answers her own question by concluding it is not about whites, but about whiteness, ‘the system of privilege and prejudice that is still held to be in place’. She ‘gets some of that’ but cannot rid herself of the conviction that black adherence to theories of whiteness is self-limiting. She longs for South Africa to become as successful as a Singapore or a Vietnam yet fears that an obsession with whiteness serves to obstruct black agency. Even so, she concedes that the controversies around whiteness pose vital questions for whites, especially for those who control the levers of economic power. ‘Has the founding compact to right the historical injustice been achieved? We have peace. But is it sufficient?’ The posing of these questions is yet another affirmation, if one is needed, that history matters. The legacies of the past remain with us even when we want to move beyond them. The difficulties of unravelling an unwanted history should not be underestimated, even when there is sufficient societal consensus to leave its residues behind (and very often, there is not). It is a process which can take generations and is often only brought about through political and popular struggles. During the time that this book was being written, the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement – sparked into life by the outrageous killing of a black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020 – took off, spreading from the United States to other countries, most notably Britain, at the heart of former empire, where a statue of former slaver, Edward Colston, was toppled into Bristol harbour. This iconic event led to urgent demands for the foundational role played by the slave trade, slavery, imperialism and colonialism in the industrialization of Britain to be more widely taught, and reparations to the black community paid. In Oxford, the authorities at Oriel College scuttled to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes which they had insisted must remain in place when the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement had first made its appearance outside their doors in 3

Ferial Haffajee, What If There Were No Whites in South Africa? Johannesburg, Picador Africa, 2015, p. 5.

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2016. In South Africa, the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement was a testament to black impatience with the pace of change, a questioning of the value of the democratic compromise that was brought about in 1994. This impatience undervalues the real progress which democracy has brought. The benefits of the peace to which Haffajee refers should never be overlooked. While South Africa was voting in 1994, a genocide in which 800,000 people died was wreaking its fury in Rwanda. Between 1998 and 2003, the Democratic Republic of Congo was plunged into an internal war which was rapidly internationalized. By 2008, the conflict and its aftermath had led to the deaths of 5.4 million people. Somalia, regularly classified as a ‘failed state’, has experienced recurrent bouts of civil war since the overthrow of the dictator Siad Barre in 1991. So it goes on, from one country torn apart by strife to another. South Africa avoided that. Although thousands died during the struggles of the 1980s and early 1990s, the democratic transition by-passed the racial war which had long been predicted by the country’s doomsayers. It is only the politically irresponsible who can preach that revolutionary war would have been preferable to the present peace, whatever its shortcomings. Haffajee records the widespread rejection of the Mandela project of reconciliation by the born-free generation of blacks yet insists that the democratic transition remains a massive achievement. She hails remarkable levels of upward mobility by blacks and the rise of a substantial black middle class. She shouts about the triumphs of equity employment and BEE in bringing this about. She cites income figures indicating that South Africa’s middle class is now ‘overwhelmingly’ black.4 She challenges assertions that the JSE and its ownership have remained unchanged, citing an estimate that R317 billion worth of BEE deals were concluded between 2001 and 2015, resulting in significant payments to broad-based trusts and community schemes.5 All this has been accompanied by an unleashing of black talent across the breadth of society, in business, the professions, the media, academia, the arts, and so on. Black students in higher education now outnumber whites by a factor of five to one. Furthermore, well over 16 million people are now in receipt of social grants which have taken millions of black people out of the worst extremes of poverty. And all this has occurred in the context of an economy that more than doubled in size between 1994 and 2015. Haffajee’s critics will complain that she is wearing rose-tinted spectacles, and that many of the achievements she cites will be negated by the impact of Covid-19 and the major shock it has given to the economy. This book has been written while the pandemic has been raging, and it is still far too early to provide 4

Haffajee is citing figures derived from the work of Justin Visagie, ‘Who Are the Middle Class in South Africa? Does it Matter for Policy’, Econ 3 x 3, 29 April 2013. 5 Haffajee, What If There Were No Whites, p. 141.

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a measured assessment of its effect. Nonetheless, predictions verge on the catastrophic. The economy may have shrunk by as much as 8 per cent in 2020; GDP has fallen by as much as one-third; unemployment may rocket to 50 per cent; millions of South Africans have been thrust into penury, their food security imperilled; government debt and repayments are rising while tax revenues are stalling, bringing nearer the time when interest payments on debt exceed tax revenues. According to one analysis, Covid-19 has brought on the largest, deepest crisis South Africa has had to face for a century.6 Whites have not been immune from the pandemic’s impact. Many of the small businesses they own have been hit hard, and many will be closed down for good and the associated employment lost. Numerous private schools tell of children being withdrawn and recruitment falling as parents are unable to pay fees. Estate agents tell of an increased number of renters being unable to renew the leases and distressed houseowners putting their properties onto the market. People are taking on more and more debts, which many will be unable to repay. All this, and more, is regularly featuring in the media. Nonetheless, although some whites will be severely hurt by this calamity, most whites will survive its worst effects, and the large majority of those who bear the brunt of the impact of Covid-19 will be black. Despite its much-heralded growth, the grasp of the black middle class on prosperity is precarious. Unlike the white middle class, it has limited financial reserves and is assailed by the social obligations of ‘black tax’, the expectations of less well-off family, relatives and friends that those who have climbed into the ranks of the relatively affluent will assist their struggle for education and survival.7 In short, when South Africa emerges from the nightmare that is Covid19, levels of racial inequality are likely to be more rather than less pronounced. Göran Therborn predicts historians will look back on Covid-19 as ‘the great unequalizer’.8 This threatens to put the relative success of the failed settler state at risk, posing the danger of increased racial polarization and a major threat to the reconciliation upon which South Africa’s democracy is premised.

Whites and reconciliation Mandela’s project revolved around the twin goals of, first, ending the conflict in South Africa by bringing the country to democracy and, second, securing that 6 7

8

Jannie Rossouw and Fanie Joubert, ‘Only Austerity Budgets Will Enable SA to Veer Away from the Fiscal Cliff ’, Business Day, 7 September 2020. Roger Southall, The New Black Middle Class in South Africa, Woodbridge, Suffolk, James Currey; Auckland Park, Jacana, 2016, pp. 176–82; Deborah James, Money from Nothing, Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2014, passim. Goran Therborn, ‘Dreams and Nightmares of the World’s Middle Classes’, New Left Review, 124, 2020, pp. 63–87.

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transition by forging reconciliation between the country’s different peoples. It is clear, looking back, that the project has remained unrealised. Prior to 1994, all but a handful of whites congregated behind the necessity of white supremacy. True, there was simultaneously incessant strife. Afrikanerdom was perpetually divided – about relationships with the British Empire, about notions of Afrikaner nationhood, about relations with English-speakers and with Coloureds and, above all, how best to maintain white domination. ‘English-­speakers’ may have traditionally been thought of as essentially British, yet in reality they were a mixed category composed of a predominantly ‘English’ component and numerous minorities whose ancestral origins lay in Europe. In addition, there were always differences of ideology between communists, liberals, conservatives and nationalists of various stripes, their battles continuously played out against the vexed issue of how to ‘deal with the native’. Racism and conviction of the supremacy of the white man ran deep, long after it lost its respectability in international politics. Against this background, it is remarkable that the white minority was brought to accept the transition to democracy. The hard reality was that the apartheid regime was running out of viable options. Yet even if they were ‘reluctant democrats’, the large majority of whites were to adjust to democracy, even if they were to use its provisions to defend their interests, albeit in a formally non-racial way. White electoral participation has more or less matched that of their fellow citizens; political parties compete for whites’ votes; whites sit in parliament for a variety of parties; groups such as Solidarity run to the courts when they perceive white and Afrikaner interests to be threatened; whites engage in civil society and in interest representation for a wide variety of causes, progressive as well as merely defensive. However, all this has been the easy bit, not least because hitherto most whites have maintained or even improved the standard of living they enjoyed under apartheid. Reconciling with fellow South Africans has been far more demanding, because this requires not merely acknowledgement of whites’ historically accumulated privileges but a willingness to give substance to racial equality. This brings us back to the vexed issue of ‘whiteness’.

Whites and whiteness Many assertions about the continuing depth of whiteness in South Africa ignore or deny the broadly progressive change in whites’ political attitudes which has accompanied democracy, and which is evidenced by extensive survey research.9 9

Robert Mattes, ‘Growth in Minority Support for the “Rainbow Nation”’ in Kate Lefko-Everett, Rajen Govender and Don Foster, Rethinking Reconciliation: Evidence from South Africa, Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2017, pp. 308–30. Mattes records that between 1997 and 2015 the proportion of whites who thought a united South Africa was desirable increased from 58 per cent to 83 per cent, and those who thought that

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Yet what the whiteness literature does point to is that in numerous ways white attitudes continue to lag behind what non-racialism requires. Two problems predominate. The first is that of ‘colour-blindness’, or the disinclination or refusal to acknowledge that being white generally implies the possession of structural advantage within today’s society and economy. It tends to conceptualize racism as primarily a matter of social attitudes, thereby detaching it from any suggestion that race is embedded in social structures. It is often accompanied by explicit commitment to ‘non-racialism’, linking this to the assertion that socio-economic criteria rather than ‘race’ should be employed to determine social disadvantage. This has historically been a position associated with South African liberalism and, as indicated in Chapter 8, is the position which has been arrived at by the DA today via a tortuous path. It is accompanied, at its most progressive, by a radical commitment to a far more equal provision of opportunities and the vision of South Africa as a meritocracy, where individuals are enabled to rise to the top without any obstruction. Although not inconsistent with social democracy, it is often accompanied by a strong adherence to the idea of the ‘free market’ and the associated notion of individualism. However, critics argue that while they welcome any white commitment to non-racialism, this is in practice often transformed into a denial of historically accumulated white privilege and can be deployed, either deliberately or unconsciously, to maintain it. Hence the second problem is that of unintended racism. In theory, at least, this is addressed by ‘diversity training’ or ‘anti-racist racism’. Each of these have their own difficulties (practitioners recognize that in practice they may work to strengthen rather than dissolve racial antagonisms), yet they have the unquestionable merit of encouraging whites to recognize how their language or behaviour may cause racial offence even when there is no intention to do so. DiAngelo argues that ‘white anti-racism’ demands not only a never-­ending determination to break with white silence about both past and present patterns of racial oppression but to strive for a ‘less white’ identity in order to achieve individual liberation.10 Correspondingly, however, her thrust can be criticized as excessively concerned with addressing individuals’ racism rather than changing the racially skewed beliefs held by identifiable categories of whites. Nonetheless, her view is broadly consistent with the interesting suggestion that much greater effort should be made to encourage (or require, via school curricula?) whites to learn at the least some basics of an African it was possible increased even more, from 32 per to 73 per cent. This was despite the fact that all three minorities simultaneously retained a more nostalgic view of apartheid than blacks, although negative assessments of apartheid increased quite dramatically among all three over the period. 10 DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, London, Penguin, 2019, p. 150.

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language. Not only would this facilitate cross-cultural communication but it would also undermine whites’ sense of superiority and render them ‘vulnerable’ by requiring them to learn from blacks.11 The closely related issue of whites’ unconscious racism is considerably more complicated. For a start, if whites in general, or individual whites, are assumed to be unconsciously racist, whatever their conscious intents, then perhaps they can justly complain that they are being put in a no-win situation. It is unsurprising that when allegations of such racism are made, they often meet with robust push-back from those who feel unjustly accused.12 Nonetheless, the notion of racism being embedded in the white unconscious retains much popular currency. Because it rests on assumptions which are difficult to prove, there have been few attempts to theorize it, but one such effort has been made by the political philosopher Peter Hudson. Drawing upon Fanon’s concept of the ‘colonial unconscious’, he argues that before 1994, although whites were conscious of themselves as ‘white’, they were unconscious of how the mechanism (the workings of the capitalist economy) produced the effect of their subjectivity (whiteness). However, since 1994, not only have they remained unconscious of the latter, but now they are also unconscious of being ‘white’ because of their dominant identity as ‘citizens’: Capitalism objectively appears to comprise free exchanges between equals but this conceals the exercise of class powers. Capitalist relations of production and class are, as Marx insisted, ‘invisible’. Here is the ambiguity in capitalism that gives the colonial unconscious its entry point … The capitalist in South Africa can thus objectively appear to treat individuals as free and equal, and at the same time, because he is still in thrall to the colonial unconscious, be the vector of a specifically colonial/racial distribution of assets and opportunities. Occupying the place of capital, the colonial unconscious intervenes in the texture of democratic, non-racial egalitarianism to impose and reproduce colonial inequality and colonial relations of production without objectively 11

12

Marcus Grohmann, ‘A Foolish Proposal? Vulnerability as an Alternative Attempt to Contribute to Decolonization and Reconciliation in Post-colonial South Africa’, Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies, 37, 2, 2020, pp. 140–59. One such instance resulted from the publication of an ‘exploratory’ commentary by the highly respected Nicoli Nattrass, Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town, on ‘Why Are Black South African Students Less Likely to Consider Studying Biological Sciences?’ It set off a storm of controversy which featured, inter alia, allegations that Nattrass’ work reflected her unconscious racial and cultural biases, to which she replied with a strident response in which she rebutted all the charges against her. For her original commentary, extensive critiques, and her reply, see South African Journal of Science, 116, Special Issue, July 2020.

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Whites and Democracy in South Africa appearing to do so. It is this ambiguity of capitalism, combined with the property powers of capital, that enable the colonial unconscious to determine the distribution of assets, resources and opportunities silently and invisibly.13

It may be objected in response that it is as naïve to believe that whites did not recognize how their racial status was preserved by the economy before 1994 as it is to suggest that whites are no longer conscious of being white today (just ask any estate agent). Nonetheless, Hudson does bring out how, left on its own, the logic of capitalism works to reproduce economic inequality while formally treating individuals as equals. If individuals are distinguished by their ownership or non-ownership of property when there is a highly unequal distribution of property and assets along racial lines, then the reproduction of economic inequality will simultaneously entail a reproduction of racial inequality. This would seem to explain how, despite BEE and other ANC policies of racial redress, the capitalist elite in South Africa continues to remain so thoroughly white. At another level, however, it fails to take into account the extent of ‘transformation’ that has come about (even if we consider this to be inadequate). After all, insofar as ownership and control of capital by a white corporate elite has been leavened by black interlopers since 1994, it would seem to follow from Hudson’s logic that the reproduction of racial inequality would be similarly ameliorated. Yet even if this does lead us to the suggestion that, step-by-step, ‘monopoly capital’ is becoming less ‘white’, it does not really address the wider questions about racial inequality which continue to compromise South Africa’s pursuit of non-racialism.

The road to non-racialism Achille Mbembe has defined South Africa’s project of becoming a non-racial democracy as entailing ‘the aim of achieving justice through reconciliation, equality through economic redress, democracy through transformation of the law and the rehabilitation of a variety of rights, including the right to dignity’, these all being enshrined in what he terms ‘a utopian Constitution’.14 This leaves much open to interpretation. Unsurprisingly, the DA has adopted what we might term a minimalist understanding of non-racialism as demanding non-discrimination on the basis of race combined with addressing the consequences of racial discrimination in the past. In contrast, Joel Netshitenzhe, one of Thabo 13

Peter Hudson, ‘The Reproduction of Racial Inequality in South Africa: The Colonial Unconscious and Democracy’, in Vishwas Satgar (ed.), Racism after Apartheid: Challenges for Marxism and Anti-Racism, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2019, pp. 158–72 (citation from p. 166). 14 Achille Mbembe, ‘Apartheid Futures and the Limits of Reconciliation’, 2015 .

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Mbeki’s closest advisers and one of the ANC’s most influential intellectuals, has spelt out a more expansive conception which views non-racialism as recognizing, but not being limited by, race. ‘It transcends the syndrome of negatives, as in “non-racial”, “non-sexist” and so on’ while simultaneously posing as the ultimate objective ‘a purpose more enduring than the pursuit of racial equality’.15 However, quite what that higher purpose is, he does not say, although presumably it envisages a society not only in which the salience of race as an arbiter of life opportunities has been overcome, but also one which has achieved high levels of inter-racial mixing and social solidarity. Meanwhile, classically, radical understandings of the national question argued that because the struggle for racial equality in South Africa was simultaneously a class struggle, a truly non-racial South Africa would only come about through social revolution and the attainment of socialism. Mbembe is right. The ideal of non-racialism embedded in the constitution is utopian. It is important to stress that there is nothing wrong about that. Utopia, by definition, is unobtainable, yet its importance lies in prescribing a society’s normative aspirations and its call for perpetual striving towards their realization, even though the journey can and never will be completed because of human fallibility. Nonetheless, despite the many contestations about the precise meaning of non-racialism, my reading is that five particular objectives are common to all: first, a societally shared commitment to democracy; second, rapid progress towards racial equality; third, addressing the land question; fourth, the overcoming of poverty, which is overwhelmingly concentrated among the black population; and fifth, the promotion of a harmonious, racially mixed and mixing society. All of these will make demands on South Africa’s whites.

A societally shared commitment to democracy The thrust of this book has been that many whites may have been ‘reluctant democrats’, yet they have adapted to the arrival of a democratically elected government. Whether this is simply realism rather than enthusiasm for the new order, it is accepted that there is no going back to the past, even if some look back with nostalgia. To be sure, some whites opt to withdraw from the ‘new South Africa’ both physically and socially as much as they practicably can, yet any realistic physical threat to democracy has long been extinguished. More often, whites have chosen to engage politically, taking full advantage of the rights to representation guaranteed by the constitution. This fundamental point does not require repetition. Nonetheless, much of this political engagement is defensive, seeking to protect minority rights. Accordingly, it follows that if whites are to put 15

Joel Netshithenze, ‘Interrogating the Concept and Dynamics of Race in Public Policy’, in Xolela Mangcu (ed.), The Colour of our Future: Does Race Matter in Post-Apartheid South Africa? Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2015, pp. 107–32.

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‘reluctant’ commitment to democracy behind, there needs to be a shift to what Mbembe calls ‘a politics of responsibility’. This would not mean that the defence of the rights of individuals or indeed of minorities would be abandoned, but it would mean movement towards ‘a full acceptance of moral responsibility for the long years of systemic brutality and human degradation suffered by blacks’ if non-racialism is to be truly achieved. Furthermore, given the depths of black poverty, ‘moral responsibility’ must inevitably imply a greater ‘material responsibility’ to be borne by higher-income groups, which means, in effect, most whites.

Progress towards racial equality It is easier to define racial inequality than to agree about what constitutes racial equality. Racial inequality is easily demonstrated by the identification of systematized political and societal inequalities along lines of race. Generally, we know racial inequality when we see it. In contrast, the idea of racial equality is more difficult to unravel. The pursuit of racial equality needs to encompass what is regarded as both ‘fair’ and realistic if progress towards a non-racial society is going to be made. Notwithstanding the problems posed by ‘speaking for others’, it is probably fair to say that black South Africans know full well what they mean by racial equality.16 In essence, they do not want to be discriminated against, and broadly speaking they want what the white population has had for years – that is, to escape hunger and achieve a reasonable standard of living. Yet this does not imply that black South Africans want absolute equality at all costs. Few would trade what they deem to be acceptable differentials in exchange for an absolute equality of poverty. Instead, it would seem that black (and hopefully white South Africans too) accept degrees of inequality if they think they are both functional and ‘fair’. Inevitably, there are going to be differences about what is meant by ‘fair’, yet such disagreement is likely to be about degree rather than principle. Most would agree, probably, that qualified engineers are justly paid more than manual workers and vice-chancellors are justly paid more than the lowliest of lecturing staff. In other words, there is likely to be recognition of the need for incentives and the rightness of differential rewards for qualifications, responsibilities and performance and so on. Where the disagreement will come in is about the scale and criteria of such differentials. The many criticisms that are made about what are widely regarded as outrageously excessive payments to politicians, political deployees and corporate executives in both the parastatals and private companies indicate that post-apartheid South Africa has not got the extent of differentials in rewards ‘right’. If it were put to the test, there would probably be wide agreement that 16 Linda Alcoff, ‘The Problem of Speaking for Others’, Cultural Critique, 20, 1991–2, pp. 5–32.

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gross disparities in reward should be narrowed, whether at source or through appropriately targeted taxation. However, because the high rate of black upward mobility into the upper echelons of society and the growth of a black middle class are perhaps the most remarkable and visible markers of social change since 1994, progress towards non-racialism is going to be largely assessed by the extent to which the elite and middle class come to reflect society’s racial composition. This further suggests that the pursuit of racial equality is likely to continue to entail the ‘levelling up’ of black South Africans and not the ‘levelling down’ of whites. Even if we agree that it is not unjust for poverty to be shared by blacks and white alike, the reappearance of a large class of poor whites is unlikely to be regarded as an ‘achievement’. Black South Africans are calling for racial equality at the top, not at the bottom of society. This does not mean that whites should not be required to make sacrifices if fairness is to be achieved. Yet this is very often more easily said than done, as the pursuit of racial equality without regard to economic or social consequences may bring adverse costs in its wake. The classic issue in this regard is the land question, which came to the fore in South African party politics in the years prior to the onset of Covid-19.

Addressing the land question As indicated in Chapter 5, the post-1994 land reform programme has not been wholly unsuccessful. Nonetheless, a hugely disproportionate amount of land suitable for agriculture remains in white hands. Given that, historically, white appropriation of black land was a major driver of black impoverishment and loss of land was a major affront to black dignity, memory and society, it is unsurprising that land reform (or the lack of it) retains major political salience and symbolism. Hence when the EFF was to put ‘the expropriation of land without compensation’ at the forefront of its demands, the ANC felt the need to scotch its appeal by following suit, pledging to change the constitution to facilitate this in their 2019 election manifesto.17 The debate about the wisdom of changing the constitution to facilitate the expropriation of land without compensation need not detain us here, save to mention that the spectre of the tragedy which has overtaken the Zimbabwean economy following the seizure of white farms from 2000 has hung over it all. Whereas free market campaigners have warned that uncompensated expropriation will drive away investment and represents a fundamental assault on property rights, the government has never been shy of warning that land hunger among 17

Anthony Butler, ‘A Campaign Born of Desperation: The “Good ANC” Battles the “Bad ANC” in the Electoral Last Chance Saloon’, in Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall (eds), Election 2019: Change and Stability in South Africa’s Democracy, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2019, pp. 66–82.

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black South Africans may lead to invasions of white farms, precipitating the sort of damaging political dynamic that occurred in Zimbabwe.18 Whatever the outcome of this particular debate, there is little doubt that the Zimbabwe precedent has proved salutary, and that the commercial agricultural lobby is aware of the urgent need to transfer more land into black hands. However, the reality is that the prospects for land reform have become increasingly compromised by major changes which have extended the dominance of huge firms over the entire agricultural sector. The purchase or expropriation of farms and land from individual white farmers is one thing, but taking on large-scale agribusiness, which now dominates agricultural production, is quite another. South African agriculture has been transformed by a massive wave of liberalization which has taken place since the late 1980s, this involving the cancellation or reduction of official subsidies to farmers and abolition of systems concerned with agricultural marketing and price regulation which sustained white farming under the NP. This has been matched by an extensive corporatization, consolidation and concentration of agricultural land and capital; increasing conversion of farmland into non-agricultural uses; increased foreign ownership of land; and the increased financialization of the sector. Formerly state-run cooperatives have now reinvented themselves as JSE-listed agribusinesses and, alongside other agribusiness giants and multinationals, have come to dominate the entire agricultural value chain, hampering the capacity of smaller enterprises and farmers to compete. Many of the latter have been bought out by larger firms, with a major decline in the number of farms. In 1971 there were nearly 90,500 commercial farming units in South Africa; by 1996, this had decreased to 60,000, and by 2007, to 40,000. Currently, the number of commercial farming units may be as low as 29,000. All this reflects the increased domination of agriculture by a relatively small number of ‘mega-farms’, resulting in increased mechanization, the shedding of labour, major land-use changes and further dispossession of rural inhabitants.19 Such monopolization severely reduces the opportunities for smaller producers. It also provides a highly inauspicious context for land reform and promotion of entry-level black farming. Meanwhile, the influence of established agriculture is buoyed by extensive evidence of poor management of (some) farms transferred into black ownership by the responsible government department, which has not yet demonstrated its expertise in enabling newly empowered black farmers to succeed. Indeed, one source claims that 90 per cent of its projects Centre for Development Enterprise, Land Reform in South Africa: A 21st Century Perspective, Johannesburg, CDE, 2005. 19 Samuel Kariuki, ‘Spatial Defragmentation in Rural South Africa: A Prognosis of Agrarian Reforms’ in Gilbert Khadiagala, Sarah Mosoetsa, Devan Pillay and Roger Southall (eds), New South African Review 6: The Crisis of Inequality, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2018, pp. 218–35. 18

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have failed, thereby rendering that land unproductive.20 Even if this exaggerates the extent of failure, it lends muscle to the arguments of the agricultural lobby that realization of the government’s target of 30 per cent of freehold agricultural land being in black ownership by 2030 would cause a crisis in production and endanger the nation’s food supply. That this danger is real is appreciated even by radical proponents of land reform. One such is Ben Cousins, who established the highly respected Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of Western Cape. He puts the case for ‘accumulation from below’ by small-to-medium-scale market-­ oriented farmers yet argues that the most productive core of large-scale commercial agriculture, comprising the top 20 per cent of farming operations, should not be targeted for land redistribution over the next two decades in order to stabilize agricultural production, enabling agrarian reform to proceed around it.21 All this reminds us that while ‘land reform’ remains vital for the attainment of greater racial equality, it is a far more complicated matter than simply transferring huge tracts of land owned by whites into black hands. Indeed, increasingly it is becoming evident that, in practice, the land question is principally an urban problem, as millions flock to the cities and towns in search of a way out of poverty. In an article in Business Day which highlighted how the Covid-19 lockdown had intensified the fight for land, resulting in a huge spike in illegal land invasions, journalist Carol Paton cited a Stats SA 2016 survey which reported that the country had 16.9 million households, 8 per cent of which were in informal settlements, with another 3 per cent in back yards and 7 per cent in traditional dwellings. Yet the number of households was growing by nearly 3 per cent a year, suggesting that the number of physical confrontations between poor citizens and the state would increase exponentially. Arguing that access to land is at the heart of solving the apartheid legacy, she averred that ‘Illegal occupations and state responses to them embody the central dilemma contained in the constitution: how to protect property rights while giving meaning to the right of the poor to housing.’22 It followed that the state should take a more activist role in appropriating land for housing. Her conclusion is one with which Ivan Turok, a prominent urban development specialist, agrees. He has stressed that the illegality of land invasions should not obscure the hardships experienced by landless people which underlie them. Poor households believe that by-passing established procedures is the 20 Ernest Pringle, ‘Land Reform and White Ownership of Agricultural Land in South Africa’, The Journal of the Helen Suzman Foundation, 70, 2013, pp. 37–42. 21 Ben Cousins, ‘Through a Glass Darkly: Towards Agrarian Reform in South Africa’, in Ben Cousins and Cherryl Walker (eds), Land Divided, Land Restored. Land Reform in South Africa for the 21st Century, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2015, pp. 250–69. 22 Carol Paton, ‘Forget ANC Palace Palavers, Watch the Plotting over Land’, Business Day, 1 September 2020.

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only way they can gain a stake in the city, even though this is hugely destructive and more likely to destroy value than create it. People end up living on sites hazardous to their health or earmarked for other purposes; they pollute and destroy the environment; they antagonize property owners and municipal resources are diverted from delivering basic services to fending off invasions, demolishing structures and getting involved in legal disputes. There is, therefore, an urgent need to address the urban land crisis by first, extensively repurposing state-owned land to provide serviced sites for people to construct their own homes; second, undertaking comprehensive land audits to identify suitable land for development, followed by deliberate acquisitions of strategic sites; third, making more efficient use of well-located land by increasing urban densities in central locations and along public transport corridors, this requiring greater transparency in procedures governing urban planning to build public trust; fourth, building upwards to facilitate more productive use of scarce urban land; and fifth, streamlining regulatory procedures and bylaws to reduce unnecessary obstacles to property development and renewal.23 However, pursuit of such a strategy will require the political will to launch a serious assault on apartheid’s legacy of both black poverty and racialized social segregation.

Addressing black poverty Popular conceptions of the good life continue to revolve around the imagery of the full-employment economy which blossomed in North America and Western Europe after the Second World War. Even in South Africa, the post-1948 years of growth were ones when overall employment steadily increased, featuring significant upward movement into white-collar and managerial positions by whites (for whom full employment was more or less a reality) and black South Africans stepping into the jobs and opportunities they left behind. But these days are now gone for good. Even though employment in South Africa has increased steadily since 1994, an unrelentingly high level of unemployment, increased dramatically by the impact of Covid-19, is destined to remain a defining aspect of the economy. Its accompaniment is extensive poverty, which cannot be wished away. Extensive enervating black poverty lies at the heart of South Africa’s enduring social and economic crisis. The extension of (very modest) social grants to the old and the disabled, for child support and so on registers as one of the ANC government’s major achievements. Nonetheless, many millions of mainly black South Africans remain outside the social security network without paid work and a direct means of support, dependent upon other family members for their material survival. There is no easy solution, no magic wand to wave by a government which has 23 Ivan Turok, ‘Urban Land Occupations Need Purposeful Action Rather than Opportunism’, HSRC Review, 16, 4, pp. 22–3.

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run out of money and is terrified by the rise in the national debt. Nonetheless, in the spirit that the way out of a crisis requires radical new thinking, the idea of South Africa’s implementing a BIG is regaining currency. BIG was an idea which gained traction in the early 2000s but was rejected by the government at the time as unaffordable. However, as the economic impact of Covid-19 becomes more evident, it is regaining momentum. A BIG is defined is an equal payment made to every person from birth to death, regardless of whether that person has an alternative income. Its purpose is to ensure that every person within a state is enabled to achieve a minimum standard of living. As an addition to other income, it is taxable, thereby ensuring a recycling of the grants paid to the better-off back into the fiscus via the tax system. Responding to objections that BIG remains unaffordable, its proponents argue that it would bring enormous advantages. For a start, it offers potential for the simplification of the present system of social grants which requires extensive and costly social administration. It would be paid to all those who currently receive such grants, which it would replace. This would allow savings by abolishing means testing, enabling the overall value of the grant to exceed the value of those currently being paid. Payment would be made electronically into the bank accounts of those who have them, and otherwise into South African Social Security Agency accounts which would be accessible through retailers – not only supermarkets, but also small ‘spaza’ shops in the townships. Payment of the grant would have a major multiplier effect and would inject significant amounts of spending capacity into the economy, benefitting retailers and other businesses, large and small. If all payments were electronic, this would enable traders to be tracked, the tax regime to be extended into the informal sector and total tax revenue to be increased. In addition, payment of BIG would increase the personal autonomy of recipients, who would be able to spend it as they chose – on food, consumption goods, education, health, housing or whatever. Indeed, one of the advantages of BIG is promoted as enabling recipients to launch small enterprises and hence increase employment. Contrary to right-wing critiques, which usually revolve around grants being frittered away on alcohol or gambling, most experiments with BIG undertaken internationally indicate that poor people overwhelmingly spend their grants responsibly. Proponents recognize that immediate introduction of BIG might be beyond the capacity of the state at the present time.24 The Black Sash argues that for the moment it should be introduced merely for those between the ages of 18 and 59, and hence as an addition to the existing social grants system, before the latter can

24 For a highly praised study of the dilemmas which would be presented to governments in implementing BIG, see Ugo Gentili, Margaret Grosh, Jameli Rigolini and Rusland Yemstov (eds), Exploring Basic Income: A Guide to Navigating Concepts, Evidence and Practices, World Bank, 2020 .

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be phased out.25 In the short term, even this limited introduction of BIG would increase South Africa’s debt. However, the response to that must be that governments across the world are simultaneously massively increasing their social expenditure to cope with the fall-out of Covid-19, and neo-liberal economics are in rapid decline. Indeed, the present mantra is, increasingly, to deal with the pandemic and work out how to pay for it later. In short, progress towards payment of BIG would point to a long-term path out of the dreadful effect of the virus on the economy, bridge the huge gulf between rich and poor and thereby promote social coherence and stability. Its principal benefits would flow overwhelmingly to the poor, and in South Africa the poor are overwhelmingly black.26

Promoting a more racially mixed society The movement of blacks into previously white-designated suburbs has often been hailed as indicating the merging of racially divided segments of the middle class into one that is genuinely ‘non-racial’. Accompanied by other changes, notably the desegregation of public schooling, the imagery of a growing black middle class as driving the momentum towards wider desegregation is a palpably attractive one. Yet, as chronicled elsewhere, ‘a deeper telling of the story of the new-found residential mobility of the black middle class is more complicated than any romanticized eulogies imply, for it takes place against the backcloth of the far-reaching racialized segregation of space that went before’.27 Indeed, outside the workplace, South Africa remains a highly divided society, even if racial inequality per se has been supplanted to a considerable degree by inequalities between ‘insiders’ (with access to formal jobs and income) and ‘outsiders’ (those who make a precarious living from the informal sector or are dependent on social grants) and between those living in suburbs and those in (overwhelmingly black) low-income townships and informal settlements.28 The changes affecting cities and towns in South Africa are far more extensive than simply desegregation alone, involving extensive changes in urban planning, transport patterns, highway expansion, the shift of retailing from central business districts to suburban shopping malls, and so on. Furthermore, while city municipalities may formulate ambitious plans for urban development, they usually lack the capacity to implement them, resulting in much of the initiative passing to private corporations and developers. Far too often, the concern of Engenas Senona, Basic Income Support: A Case for South Africa, 2020 . 26 Naude Malan, ‘A Basic Income Grant Will Transform the South African Social Security System’, Daily Maverick, 19 August 2020; Mary Burton, ‘Why All South Africans Should Back a Basic Income Grant’, Business Day, 13 September 2020. 27 Southall, The New Black Middle Class, pp. 185–6. 28 Steven Friedman, ‘The People Who Need Change the Most Remain Unheard’, Daily Maverick, 168, 1–7 May 2021. 25

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the latter groups is with profit to be made by driving developments in wealthier, more advantaged areas, their activities connived in by councils seeking greater revenues from property rates and increased commercial activities in urban and suburban hubs. Thus, while municipal authorities have sought to effect some redistribution of revenues to finance the improvement of basic facilities in former townships and poorer districts, they have generally failed to engage in more far-reaching geographical engineering to address past inequalities and segregation. In consequence, new ‘geographies of exclusion’ based upon the inheritance of racial division and unregulated workings of property and labour markets have been further entrenched, and the poverty of the townships has continued to be hidden away. Although the movement of middle-class black people into former white areas implies a significant shift from racial to class segregation, the reality is decidedly mixed: property prices often determine that blacks congregate in formerly lower-­middle-class white areas while their previous occupants move out, and even if they do not meet outright hostility when they move into a formerly white area, they are expected to conform to white norms. Finally, the desegregation of space in South Africa is overwhelmingly one-way. Although the former white suburbs will inevitably become more racially mixed, the townships will remain almost exclusively black. The complexity of unravelling South Africa’s deep history of racial residential segregation defies easy resolution. Yet if the goal of non-racialism means anything, then there is clearly a need for radical interventions. Turok’s call for the rapid release of state- and municipal-owned land should apply as much in the suburbs as on the fringes of towns and cities; there need to be appropriate increases in municipal rates paid on privately owned vacant land in urban areas, which is often retained for speculative purposes; planning laws should be changed to ensure that developers are encouraged or compelled to provide for mixed-level as well as high-end housing; and of course there needs to be a rationalization of the municipal planning and regulatory process to speed up developments, which too often get caught up in bureaucratic and political tangles.29 Inevitably, such changes will entail public consultations, and white property owners are notoriously defensive of their property values and are likely to be resistant to densification of their residential areas. Yet while municipalities should remain devoted to servicing the needs of their ratepayers, they cannot be allowed to be unduly beholden to them, and greater emphasis will need to be laid upon the public value which will be derived from the enhanced desegregation of space. 29 Crispen Olver, A House Divided: The Feud That Took Cape Town to the Brink, Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2019, provides ample illustration of how intraparty battles, politicians’ connivance with business interests and clashes between politicians and municipal administrators impact upon the interests of ordinary citizens, and particularly the poor.

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Whites and the quest for non-racialism This book has sought to unravel the role that whites have played in the making of South African democracy. Numerous subsidiary questions have followed. How were white constructions of the nation formed after 1910? Did these pose obstacles to the eventual transition to majority rule and democracy in 1994? How have whites wrestled with the burden of a brutally unjust past which the wider world and the new democratic order placed upon their shoulders? How have whites reacted to the concession of political power? To what extent have they indicated that they are willing and able to participate in making South Africa’s democracy substantially ‘non-racial’? Many will find the answers this book has given to these questions deeply unsatisfactory and disappointing. For a start, some will object that I have downplayed the role performed by many individual whites across different historical eras in the struggle for a non-racial South Africa. My answer to that is by no means to deny their contribution, but to argue that a thematic focus upon progressive whites – when it is well established that they were always a small, dissentient and brave minority within their own community – would have been misplaced. Instead, the major focus has been upon the diverse political roles and attitudes of ‘ordinary whites’ and how, given the history of white domination and apartheid, they have adjusted to democracy and black majority rule. In seeking to do this, I have sought to avoid assuming a moralistic tone. Although I have portrayed many, perhaps most – but not all – whites as ‘reluctant democrats’, I have not done so out of an urge to condemn, but through an effort to understand how their attitudes and orientations have been shaped by where they have come from and how they perceive the changed world around them. A theme running through this approach is that popular attitudes often lag behind fundamental changes which overthrow pre-existing political orders and take a long time to catch up. The paradigmatic example of this is provided by post-war Germany, where it took a younger generation of Germans brought up in a democracy to help their parents and grandparents confront their responsibility for the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. Any careful reflection suggests that, for all the talk of reconciliation and rainbows, the wholehearted embrace of democracy by whites was always likely to take a long time, spanning at least a generation. In any case, as continuously stressed, ‘whites’ are not – and never have been – a homogeneous group, and political attitudes among them are always going to be different, reflecting different ideologies and beliefs, just as they do among other broad categories of South Africans. ‘Race’ shapes, but does not determine, attitudes. This does not detract from the challenges confronting white South Africans if they want to participate in the making of a non-racial South Africa. Overall, they continue to enjoy better life chances and are far better off materially than the large majority of South Africans. The reasons for this need to be honestly

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confronted, and recognition given as to why and how it needs to change if South African democracy is not to be continuously bedevilled by racial fault-lines which so easily lend themselves to exploitation by unscrupulous politicians. As Jonny Steinberg has commented with reference to the stresses of the postCovid-19 economy, ‘pain will be so much harder to redistribute than gain’, and whites will need to be particularly aware of complacency.30 Steinberg’s words ring even louder and truer in the wake of the deeply disturbing events of late July 2021, when South Africa was stunned by an orgy of looting in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng by (overwhelmingly) black South Africans, the majority poor but including significant numbers of those with fancy cars who were better off. This involved the massive ransacking and burning of shops, shopping malls, warehouses and lorries, along with the total disruption of the major road and rail distribution arteries linking Durban to Johannesburg. This was an occurrence which will go down as a major turning point in South African history, like ‘Sharpeville’ and ‘Soweto’, even though it has not yet acquired an agreed name. It is clear that the combination of massive poverty, hunger and precarity among black people at the bottom of South Africa’s social heap, exacerbated by the strains imposed by Covid-19 (notably the loss of jobs in a country of already massive unemployment) and the government’s inadequate response (the distribution of only short-term and very basic relief payments) constituted a social explosion waiting to happen. It only needed a match to be lit and thrown into the tinderbox for the explosion to happen. It seems likely that the match was lit, and deliberately thrown, by elements within the Zuma faction within the ANC, some apparently embedded in the state machinery itself, in revenge for the arrest and jailing of former president Zuma for his refusal to obey judicial orders to appear before the Zondo Commission, which he himself had been required to appoint, to enquire into the ‘capture of the state’ which took place during his presidency. One consequence may be that the ANC has come to a turning point, and that it may split, although that is beyond the limits of this brief discussion here. It will take time for the full impact and dynamics of this mighty social explosion to emerge and be dissected. Nonetheless, what in significant part was a major revolt of the black poor in a society that is still fractured and polarized along racial lines constitutes a major setback to the aspirations for making a non-racial democracy. Fear among whites (and Indians) that the looting of shops may develop into invasions by the black poor into suburbs led to barricades being erected to control entry in many residential areas and may well continue to exacerbate racial tensions. Those foolish enough to write about contemporary South Africa are always likely to be thrown off course by explosions like this one. This author is no 30

Jonny Steinberg, ‘Pain Will Be So Much Harder to Redistribute than Gain’, Business Day, 13 December 2020.

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exception. Whether the events in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng were a revolt, an arrested revolution, a political insurgency or an attempted coup (all characterizations which have been debated in the media), the fact that they occurred when this book was about to go to press prompted a worried questioning of whether the argument that it has laid out continued to hold. Given the question that this book has posed – ‘How have whites adapted to democracy?’ – the answer is a qualified, but nonetheless, broadly hopeful one. It is a given that the racial tensions that are never far from the surface in South Africa will never go away until a much greater equality between black and white is secured for all South Africans. This is a fundamental requirement for white survival in South Africa’s failed settler state. It remains true that many whites remain sceptical about the virtues of South African democracy; nonetheless, they recognize that there is no going back to apartheid. A long look back at South African history indicates that they have proved capable of adjusting to enormously far-reaching social and political change. We may despair that many whites remain deeply conservative, unwilling or uncertain as to how to participate in the making of a non-racial society. Yet, simultaneously, there are many white South Africans who have turned their face decisively against the past and who earnestly want to see the realization of the constitution’s ideals. Comfortingly, in the aftermath of the destruction, there are already hopeful signs. The most important one is that, whereas it was previously dismissed as impractical, the government is now urgently considering the introduction of a BIG, and this is being welcomed even in politically conservative quarters. That can only be a beginning to much more extensive changes in policy and practice, some of which were discussed above, if anything like social stability based on social justice is to be achieved. For those of us who are white, it remains essential to cling to the ideal that there is still white in the South African rainbow, even while we recognize that much more will be demanded of us if we are to achieve the non-racialism to which the constitution aspires.

Appendix Focus groups: methodology and analysis Focus group discussions have become one of the key methods of qualitative exploration in the social sciences. They are used for different purposes in a variety of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research settings and are generally defined as discussions held for research purposes which bring together participants to discuss topics of mutual interest to themselves and to those undertaking the research. In that they involve a collective activity, focus groups are designed to generate interaction and discussion, thereby providing the opportunity for the researcher(s) not only to ascertain shared or individual views on the topics discussed, but also to interpret their social meaning – that is, the meanings that lie behind the views that are explicitly stated. Key features of focus groups concern, first, appropriate selection of the participants. Quantitative research requires standardization of procedures and random selection of participants to remove the potential influence of external variables and ensure generalizability of results. In contrast, subject selection in qualitative research is purposeful; participants are selected who can best inform the research questions and enhance understanding of the phenomenon being studied. Consequently, one of the most important tasks in the study design phase is to identify appropriate participants, their appropriateness being determined by the subject under investigation. Decisions regarding selection are based on the research questions, theoretical perspectives and evidence informing the study. In many studies, this will require selection of participants according to demographic characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, income and so on in order to ensure that participants are ‘representative’ of the category of people (for instance, members of professions, migrants or people of voting age) being investigated. Furthermore, whereas quantitative research requires statistical calculation of sample size, the sample size in qualitative research is not generally predetermined, the number of participants depending upon the number required to inform all important elements of the phenomenon being studied. Generally, the size of focus groups varies between five and twelve participants, the need for opportunity for all participants to be able to have their say being balanced against the requirement of the group or groups to reflect the representivity of the population involved.1 1

Michael Bloor, Jane Frankland, Michelle Thomas and Kate Robson, Focus Groups in

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The second key feature of focus groups concerns the role of the moderator, who is supposed to steer and facilitate the discussion. Rather than taking a leading role in the discussion, the moderator is expected to steer its communicative dynamics (while simultaneously remaining outside them) and to listen to participants, while ensuring that no individuals or small groups dominate. Furthermore, the moderator is expected to ensure that the discussion remains focused upon the subject of investigation, while at the same time being prepared to challenge people’s perceptions of reality and discuss inconsistencies in their thinking. Necessarily, much depends on the researcher ensuring that the moderator is required to ask the right questions, these being informed by the overall theoretical and practical design of the research.2 The focus groups for this study were conducted on behalf of the researcher by Citizen Surveys, a marketing and social research company based in Cape Town that conducts both quantitative and qualitative research. It operates nationally and internationally, and works with a wide array of clients, including government departments, private companies, universities, academics, non-­governmental organizations and development agencies. It prides itself on bringing together staff who offer diverse skills from different fields to offer a multi-disciplinary approach to subjects under investigation and is supported by experts in sampling and statistics; political, social and economic research; monitoring and evaluation; and marketing. Citizen Surveys conducted a series of 8 in-depth qualitative focus groups in 4 provinces of South Africa, and 2 areas within each: Western Cape (northern and southern suburbs), KwaZulu-Natal (Pietermaritzburg and the country town of Howick), Gauteng ( Johannesburg northern and southern suburbs) and the Free State (Bloemfontein and the country town of Brandfort) in October 2019. All of the focus group discussions were recorded and subsequently transcribed verbatim. Two focus groups, both in the Free State, were conducted in Afrikaans and the transcripts were translated into English. All of the transcripts were read, reviewed and checked against video recordings. Minor edits and corrections were made where necessary. As far as possible, all comments were assigned to individual participants according to identifying numbers provided at the outset of the discussion, in order to allow for later analysis according to demographic characteristics such as gender, age, etc., if required. Subsequently, all of the transcripts were analysed thematically before being coded thematically using the NVivo qualitative data analysis software. All coded data was then exported into Word documents, which covered major themes and sub-themes across the eight transcripts.

2

Social Research, London, Sage, 2001. Michal Krzyzanowski, ‘Analysing Focus Group Discussion’, in Ruth Wodak and Michal Krzyzanowski (eds), Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2008, pp. 162–81.

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Citations from the focus group discussions used by the author in the text of this book are reproduced faithfully with minimal editorial intervention. However, where it has made the text more comprehensible, I have on occasion: omitted occasional words, corrected verb tenses and inserted prepositions where I have deemed this appropriate and helpful. All citations are followed by indication of which group they are drawn from, the location of the group, whether respondents chose to identify as English-speaking (E), Afrikaans (A) or Afrikaans / English-speaking (A/E), household income level and age category. Household income levels are quite simply characterized as upper (more than R20,000 per month), middle (R10,000–R20,000 per month) and lower (less than R10,000 per month). Note, however, that although these income levels broadly place the large majority of respondents in South Africa’s middle class, they are all modest.

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Index Adam, Heribert 183, 214 African National Congress (ANC) 2, 45 congress tradition 14 internal resistance 36 negotiations 55–7 Truth and Reconciliation Commission 64 management of economy 103 statism 223 African People’s Organisation (APO) 46 Africanist tradition 6, 14 Afrikaners 21, 24, 27, 33, 34, 39 as active proponents 198–202 Afrikaner capital after apartheid 180 Afrikaner Party 29 Afrikanerdom and dissent 38 as armed opposers 188–91 control of public service 34 entry into private sector 182 as inclusive proponents 196–8 as passive resisters 191–6 as poor whites 184–5 politics after apartheid responses to democracy 187–202 stratification of 183 struggle for Afrikaans Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) 189

street theatre 190

Afriforum 200 Alexander, Neville 4 apartheid 1 compared to other oppression 83 as crime against humanity 75 as genocide 84 basic income grant (BIG) 245 Biko, Steve 11–13

Boers 21 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo 12 Boshoff, Carel 193 Botha, Louis 27 Botha, P.W. 2, 3 and corporate elite 39–41 loses presidency 41 and reform 37, 39–40 and TRC 66 Breyten, Breytenbach 197 Brooks, Heidi 55 Burton, Mary 70 Cardo, Michael 43 Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) 45 Congress Alliance 5, 46 Congress of the People, 46 Coetzee, Ryan 161, 164, 169 colonialism of a special type 5 Conservative Party 48 Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) 104 Concerned South Africans Group (Cosag) 187 Conway, Daniel 15 Cronin, Jeremy 111 Cousins, Ben 243 Daniel, John 64, 69, 70 De Beer, Zac 60 De Klerk, F.W. 2, 41, 52, 95, 102, 183, 191 calls white referendum 53 denies apartheid crime against humanity 75, 80, 82 and judiciary 60 and power-sharing 41 and TRC 66–7 white backing 157

267

268

Index

De Lille, Patricia 166, 171 Democratic Party 41, 48, 52 and negotiations 55 Democratic Alliance 156–226 and colour blindness 236 electoral performance 158, 170 and floor-crossing 160 formation and performance 157 and liberalism 156 and race 156, 173, 176 review panel 169 Western Cape election 2000, 159 DiAngelo, Robin 213 Die Boermag 190 Dubow, Saul 32 Du Toit, Pieter 181 Economic Freedom Fighters, 178, 211, 220 Ehlers, Anton 198, 219 Eloff, Theunis 187 English-speakers 233 and apartheid 34 and Communist Party 34 political attitudes 35 Fanon, Frantz 11, 12, 237 Fischer, Bram 197 Floyd, George 232 Fraser, Nancy 206 Freedom Front, 188 Giliomee, Herman 215 Glaser, Clive 15 Hafajee, Ferial 231 Herrenvolk democracy 33 Hestigte Nasionale Party (HNP) 38 Howard-Hassman, Rhoda 221 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) 52, 60, 162 Institute of Justice and Reconciliation 94 Institute of Race Relations 46, 119, 120, 173, 226 and Democratic Alliance 173, 175 James, Deborah 182 Jansen, Jonathan 187, 196 Jonker, Ingrid 197 Leon, Tony 52, 57, 60

and capital punishment 160 ‘Fight Back’ slogan 159 Leonard, Pauline 15 Le Roux, Michiel 169 Liberal Party 34, 46–8 liberalism 45, 51 black critiques of 32 and race 171, 176 and transformation 168 Loubser, Linda 196, 168 Macdonald, Michael 24 Mack, Katherine 72 Macpherson, C.B. 44 Madonsela, Thuli 199 Maimane, Musi 167 Malan, D.F. 28 Malema, Julius 136, 200 Mandela, Nelson 2, 3, 17, 61 Democratic Alliance claims legacy of, 165 and Ingrid Jonker, 197 and judiciary 60 and non-racialism 229 and reconciliation 102, 234–5 Mare, Gerhard 3 Marshall, T.H. 205 Mashaba, Herman 174 Mattes, Robert 145, 155 Mazibuko, Lindiwe 165 criticizes DA 172 as Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader 165, 167, 168 and Equity Employment Act 175 resigns from DA 167, 168 Mbeki, Moeletsi 199 Mbeki, Thabo 64 attacks TRC 64 and economy, 104 government of 109 Mbembe, Achille 238 Mills, Charles W. 11 Minnow,Martha 70 Moodley, John 174 Mpithi, Luyola, 172 multiculturalism, 8

Index Myburgh, James 176 National Party (NP) 1 and 1948 election 29–30 and 1989 election and 1994 election 10 change of name 158 and fusion 28 and Nazi ideology 76 and negotiations 52–4 and resistance to accountability 62 and TRC 69 and Western Cape election, 2000 159 Ndebele, Njabulo 212 Netshitenzhe, Joel 238–9 New National Party (NNP) 158 Nolutshungu, Sam 44 non-racialism 239–47 whites and 248 Ntuli, Mbale 174 Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) 6, 47 Pandit, Vijaya Lakshimi 32 Piketty, Thomas 222, 226 Posel, Deborah 92 Progressive Federal Party (PFP), 37, 37n, 48, 50 Progressive Party (PP) 35, 37 Progressive Reform Party (PRP), 48 Progressive tradition 48 Qobo, Mzukisi Qunta, Christine, 220 racial redress, 108 Black Economic Empowerment 109, 115, 130 rainbowism, 7 Ramaphosa, Cyril 107, 109, 225–56 Ramphele, Mamphela 166–7 reparations, 218 Rieff, David 93 Sachs, Albie 199 Schulz-Herzenberg, Collette 210 Schwarz, Bill 231 segregation, 30–31

269

Selfe, James 173 Separate Development 30 settler colonialism, 22–4 South Africa as failed settler state 23, 231 Shandler, David 49 Shaw, Mark 112 Simpson, Graeme 92 Smuts, Jan 22, n speech to IRR 31 welfare and reformist initiatives 31 Solidarity, 194, 198, 199 complaints re black racism 214 speaking for Afrikaners 199 South African Communist Party (SACP) 104 South African Indian Congress (SAIC) 45 Spoor, Richard 221 Statistics South Africa 3 and white poverty line 185 Steenbuisen, Jon 173 Steinberg, Jonny 249 Steyn, Adrian 195 Steyn, Melissa 150–2 Suidlanders, 201 Suzman, Helen 48 Tambo, Oliver 56 Teppo, Anninka 183 Therborn, Goran 23, 234 Thiessen, Gunnar 72 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 17, 61 and amnesty 64–70 conceptions of truth 92 and reconciliation 77–80 and reparations 218–20 white views on 92 Turok, Ivan 259 Tutu, Archbishop Desmond 7 Union of South Africa 24, 26 United Nations 1 United Democratic Front (UDF) 50 United Party 28, 29 Van den Berghe, Pierre 33, 35 Herrenvolk democracy 33

270

Index

Van der Westhuizen, Christie 37, 40, 180, 194 and enclave nationalism 194 Van Rooyen, Desmond 107 Van Schalkwyk, Marthinus 158, 157, 159, 160 Verwoerd, Hendrik 34, 95 Verwoerd, William 197 Viljoen, Constand 188 Villa-Vicencio, Charles 70 Visser, W. 193 whites as bystanders 90 complicity in apartheid 86, 97, 225 fear of crime as fundamentalists 152 as global outcasts 1 as millionaires 221–2 as pragmatists 153 post-colonial departure from Africa 23 and recognition 212–16 and reconciliation, 70 and redistribution 216 as reluctant democrats 150, 154, 248 and representation 206–12

and societal racism 213 as taxpayers 222 views on democracy 121 views on Jacob Zuma 129 views on Nelson Mandela 122, 123 views on political participation 145 as voters 153 white citizenship 227 white emigration 138–40 white fragility 213 white monopoly capital 110, 217 white nationalisms 26–9 whiteness 10, 120, 232, 235 and back-stage talk 183 and governance 151 narratives of 150–3 as unconscious racism 237 Yaccob, Zac 199 Zille, Helen 16 chairperson of DA Federal Council 173, 176 criticism of by review panel 170 Zuma, Jacob 104–7, 113, 146, 184–5 and looting 249