19. Simon Grindrod complaining on Twitter that no South Africans of European ancestry had ever proclaimed themselves as Africans under apartheid:

They called themselves Afrikaners, you twat, that’s Afrikaans for Africans.

— Richard Spoor (@Richard_Spoor) January 15, 2020

18. The complications stemming from implementing race quotas in the South African national cricket team, as highlighted by a report in The Hindu newspaper:

South Africa’s decision to overlook Temba Bavuma for the second Test against England earlier this month turned the spotlight on the complicated, sensitive issue of racial representation again. By omitting Bavuma, who had recovered from injury, South Africa fell short of its transformation target — which requires the team to field six coloured players, including two black Africans, averaged over a season — for the second straight Test match. … Jonty Rhodes understands the difficulty of the task before the team management. “Now you have a scenario where (Kagiso) Rabada is suspended (for the fourth Test).

“If (Lungi) Ngidi is injured and can’t play, that will mean Bavuma has to play. You’re dropping a fast bowler but you’re bringing in a batsman. From that perspective, it really is tough,” he says. But Rhodes, who grew up during the apartheid era in a racially-segregated South Africa, is in no doubt about the need for racial quotas in sport. “We in South Africa have a legacy of apartheid. How many generations does it take to address that? “You still have disadvantaged communities based on race. So they might have political freedom but they don’t have economic freedom,” he says.”

17. Ferial Haffajee’s comments on social media on her preferred candidate in the DA leadership race:

A moment of truth. Who will it choose? The jaded, conservative adulterer given to histrionics who is male? Or the fresh-blooded, progressive live-wire who is female? All eyes 👀

— Ferial Haffajee (@ferialhaffajee) February 5, 2020

16. Herman Mashaba’s open letter to the board of the IRR, complaining about the IRR attempting to stage a coup within the DA:

“I wrote in October last year that I believe the IRR has become the Guptas of the DA. The past few months has made me more resolute that a rogue group within the IRR has captured the DA. What I have detected is that this has been done secretly, without the official sanction of either organisation. I know some of you personally. You have expressed concerns that you never signed off on any of this. Rather, what has transpired was designed by senior members of the IRR and the DA to stage a coup within the official opposition of our country. The objective has been to advance racial denialism and remove anyone in the way of this in the DA.”

Mashaba joined the DA in 2014, before leaving it again in 2019. The close but informal relationship between the IRR and the liberal opposition goes back decades. Before becoming a Member of Parliament for the United Party Helen Suzman was a member of the Executive Council of the Institute. She was then instrumental in the breakaway of the “race deniers” from that party and the formation of the Progressive Party, the founding predecessor party of the modern-day DA.

15. Businesswoman and “billionaire in the making” Nthabaleng Likotsi's complaint on social media at being subjected to the indignity of equal treatment at a development finance institution.

Everything is wrong with black people who socialize with white people alot

— prometheus (@prometh95242132) February 3, 2020

14. The IMF’s interesting suggestion as to how to reduce inequality in South Africa - without touching the ANC’s race policies, which the Fund continues to regard as sacrosanct:

“Efforts to reduce inequality have focused on higher social spending, targeted government transfers, and affirmative action to diversify wealth ownership and promote entrepreneurship among the previously marginalized. These measures need to be complemented with reforms that promote private investment, jobs, and inclusive growth.”

13. UCT doctoral researcher Wanelisa Xaba in the Daily Vox on the damage being done to black Africans being educated in “Colonial White Schools” in South Africa:

“This useless government needs to intervene in these White private and public schools with urgency. Black children are dying physically, spiritually and psychologically. … [It] is important to know that the colonial origins of Western ‘education’ has created a system that socializes both Black and white kids for a Master/Slave role in the settler colony (AKA South Africa). Western ‘education’ and by extension schools are ideological machines that pump out coloniality and anti-Blackness. These ideological machines (because of their colonial origins) are ill equipped to house racial diversity, embrace indigenous knowledges or groom critical thinkers who can engage with the South African context. … The people who look after your children are evil, they are invested in coloniality and your child’s racial identity is sore-eye to them.”

12. Former DA Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba explaining to Eusebius McKaiser, on 702, the source of the tensions between himself and the DA in the city:

“… A few months before they started planning with the ANC to come out with a motion of no confidence. A few people, not a majority of DA people. There was a cabal that started feeling that I am a cheeky black. You know I grew up in an environment where we used to be called cheeky blacks. Cheeky blacks are those blacks who were not toeing the line. I started actually refusing to go and present my government programmes to the DA and I said to them ‘if you want me to come and present to you, call all the political parties including the EFF, because I was not a DA mayor, I am a mayor of the City of Johannesburg’.”

11. The headline placed by 702 in their online report on the above conversation: “I wanted one SA for all but DA members called me cheeky black - Herman Mashaba”

702 transcribed Mashaba’s comments as follows: “A few months before there were talks of a motion of no confidence, there were few DA members who started calling me a cheeky black. Cheeky blacks were those who were not toeing the line.”

10. Floyd Shivambu’s attack on the SACP’s Solly Mapaila for saying more credit should be given to whites who fought and died in the struggle against apartheid:

Solly Mapaila was paying tribute to Dr Neil Aggett who died in detention in 1982, as did Steve Biko, Ahmed Timol, and so many others who died in the struggle for democracy. Are you saying he should not do that?

— Madeleine Fullard (@mfullard2) January 29, 2020

9. Eusebius McKaiser in the Mail & Guardian on why he can no longer be bothered to argue that black people too can be capable of racism:

“In my first book, A Bantu In My Bathroom, I argued that black people are as capable of racism as white people are… Nowadays, I have almost no appetite, unless I am pushed very hard, to explain and defend my view. I decline most invitations to discuss with fellow black people whether we can be racist. This is because my priorities have shifted. I think the elimination of white supremacy in the world is a far more urgent goal to work towards than a footnoted definitional debate between black interlocutors on an interesting theoretical question about the elasticity of the terms “racism” and “racist”.”

8. The way in which South Africa’s Judicial Services Commission (on which Julius Malema sits) approaches high level appointments, as described by Supreme Court of Appeal justice Azhar Cachalia:

“Recently there were five vacancies in the SCA for which candidates were shortlisted by the JSC. Among the candidates were two white males who were shortlisted. There was a third candidate who had acted in the SCA (very competent) but he was not shortlisted because there was an unwritten policy not to shortlist too many white males.

It was almost seen as unfair to shortlist them because it would create an unrealistic expectation of appointment for them. Until then, we had understood the policy to be the following: if you were a competent judge of good standing you would be at least shortlisted unless there was a compelling reason not to do so. There is now a spectacle of legal professionals being asked to “help out” because of a shortage of skills – even at SCA level – who are then not shortlisted for or appointed to permanent positions because of race.

The judicial institutions currently have a shortage of skills. The SCA’s President was informed that she would not be able to appoint more than one white male. I make no comment on the qualities of the other candidates, but this policy is applied despite the fact that there is a skills deficit in our courts.”

7. Ferial Haffajee in the Daily Maverick critiquing Politicsweb’s critique of transformationism:

“Zille refers me to what she calls two seminal articles on the non-racial vision by Politicsweb founder and editor James Myburgh. In those, Myburgh expounds on what he calls a liberal vision of non-racialism versus what he sees as the ANC’s “transformational” politics. It is a profoundly conservative argument in the South African context in how it advocates not seeing race as a definition and appropriation of non-racialism.

The term transformational, as coined by the early congress movements, relates to understanding the role of race in South Africa, understanding the moral requirement of black (and African) leadership while holding true to a vision of overcoming race as a fundamental identity in a socially just country. That is the vision in the Constitution, but Zille and the DA will now cleave to Myburgh’s race-blind assertions of a new non-racialism. It is anything but. And therein lies the rub.”

6. The strange Western liberal obsession with the tiny Afrikaner enclave of Orania in the Northern Cape, as both described and reflected in Rebecca Davis' article in the Daily Maverick:

“It is a festering boil on the face of social cohesion; a grotesque suggestion that the country’s racial rifts can never truly be sewn together. Orania exposes the lie of the New South Africa. But Orania is also a useful symbol. It is a way of outsourcing and distancing white racism, allowing liberal whites to reassure themselves that they are not like those whites, so filled with racial hatred that they cannot even bring themselves to pretend. It is a subject beloved of both local and international journalists. Part of the fascination is that of any weird, cult-like subculture. Part of it is the voyeuristic thrill of snooping on unconcealed prejudice: “bigotry tourism”, as one writer termed it. When the British Guardian ran a long-form piece on Orania in 2019, it became one of its most-read pieces of the year.”

5. The ongoing– and seldom criticised - racial abuse DA Head of Policy Gwen Ngwenya is subjected to on social media for dissenting from the racial nationalist consensus in South Africa:

4. Peter Bruce’s comment in the Financial Mail on the DA’s recent draft statement of values and principles, released by Ngwenya.

“To an extent, [Gwen] Ngwenya fixes that in her brief paragraphs about what she calls the social market economy. That’s what the Germans call their economy and, as she rightly notes, “ownership of risk by private participants in a market economy means a right and a duty to both the rewards and responsibilities of success or failure”. Then this: “A social market economy ... is not one where there is no government intervention at all. There are some functions and services that governments can perform better than markets, or to supplement markets.” So no free market then, nor another SAA bailout.

Rather, she’s stating the obvious. And on race in the economy you get “governments in (a social market economy) have a role to play in enhancing equality of opportunity and providing strong safety nets and trampolines for the most vulnerable”. That’s basically black people, right? As it turns out, yes. I can live with that, but I could just as easily live with a party or policy that wasn’t coy about race. The DA should not be essaying itself into linguistic or ideological corners. It should be doing what works. You can be a liberal and believe race is a proxy for disadvantage.”

3. The Daily Maverick report on the same document headlined: “DA releases new vision for party — avoiding any mention of apartheid”:

The document describes a myriad of unjust apartheid policies, and their effect on the present. It states: “Redress refers to the need to remedy or correct an unfair or unjust situation. Our past is littered with myriad injustices including forced removals, job reservation, detention without trial, disparities in education, racial segregation, and concentration camps. The consequences of these injustices remain, compounded by poor governance, and are reflected in high rates of poverty, unemployment, and general inequality of opportunity.”

[The Oxford English Dictionary defines “apartheid” as: “n. (S Afr.) (policy of) racial segregation.”]

In her article Rebecca Davis reported on this section as follows:

“It affirms the DA’s commitment to redress, but the document’s list of the “myriad injustices” in South Africa’s past which require addressing is revealing. It does not mention apartheid by name, but includes “forced removals, job reservation, detention without trial, disparities in education, racial segregation” – and “concentration camps”. The latter is a reference to the internment methods used by the British against Afrikaners (and, though seldom mentioned, some South Africans of colour) during the South African War, 1899-1902. This inclusion, together with the absence of mention of either “apartheid” or “colonialism”, will fuel the belief that one of the party’s major priorities at the moment is winning back disenchanted white Afrikaans voters who defected to the Freedom Front Plus in the 2019 general election."

2. The Sunday Times' editorial challenging the Ngwenya document's opposition to ANC race quotas, on the basis that SA needs a strong opposition:

The document states: 

"Each individual is unique and not a racial or gender envoy; thus, diversity is not demographic representivity. Individuals, when free to make their own decisions, will not be represented in any and every organization, sector, company or level of management according to a pre-determined proportion. The DA therefore opposes race, gender or other quotas."

In its editorial the newspaper responded:

"The DA draft policy proposals released by its policy chief, Gwen Ngwenya, show that the party is not interested in inheriting SA's problems and resolving them. Should the DA adopt Ngwenya's proposals as they are at its April policy conference, it would mean the party sees no need to reverse the current inequalities which are a result of discriminatory laws of the past. To remove racial quotas and pretend that we are an equal society can only serve to retain the status quo - leaving the majority of poor South Africans, who are black, to continue to live in squalor... Without a strong opposition, we would return to the era that saw an arrogant ANC destroying state-owned entities and running municipalities into the ground."

1. EFF leader Julius Malema’s remarks to a press conference on Sunday, 9 February 2020, on how the “white man” had taken over the country under Cyril Ramaphosa:

“There were two people who misled President [Ramaphosa]. It was Pravin [Gordhan]. It was Jabu Mabuza. An African has fallen. But the Indian remains. Because these minorities are not touched. Jabu Mabuza left. We said… everyone in this country agreed that these two misled President. It was an African and an Indian. Only an African leaves.

Because that is how it is supposed to be, in this country. It is supposed to be like that. Minorities are not held accountable. Cyril has taken our country back into the hands of a white man. They have captured Union Building. They are running this country. Business is running this country, the same way they Guptas were doing, white capital is running this country.

And because it has got money, because it controls everyone, no one is challenging them. No one is challenging them. So we have taken a decision to challenge them. There is no white man who is going to capture Union Buildings under our watch. We must not allow that. The same way we have not allowed the Guptas to capture this country, no white man is going to capture this country.

It can’t be ‘it is a state capture when it is done by Indians, and then it is ‘investment advice’ when it is done by whites. No ways. This whites have become more arrogant. Africans are being removed in positions of power. African businessmen and women are closed out. They are characterised as corrupt. Any African person who gets a tender under this government is investigated and is declared ‘corrupt’. But when it is whites, there is no problem.”