Prologue

Approximately 1500 years ago the newly established Christian church in Europe introduced a set of prohibitions relating to marriage which fundamentally changed the culture and minds of Europeans over the succeeding centuries (Joseph Henrich The WEIRDEST People in the World).

These new moral and legal injunctions embraced monogamy, little or no cousin marriage, bilateral inheritance, nuclear households and especially neolocal (separate) residences for newlyweds.

In so doing the Church slowly broke up the default web of kin relationships and obligations that characterised European society before then and which persists in most societies around the world which have escaped later European acculturalation. These religious injunctions laid the conditions which ultimately led to the emergence of Protestantism, vastly increased literacy, market economies, the scientific and industrial revolutions, the struggle for human rights and freedoms, colonialism, a massively increased pace of technological innovation and ever more destructive warfare.

Such material and social changes in turn exerted powerful effects on the minds of the broader European population affecting multiple dimensions of perception, cognition and moral norms and values. Not surprisingly, positive reinforcement pathways between the minds of the population and the changed social and material conditions continued to drive ever-increasing change setting up a self-sustaining cycle - with no end in sight.

What has emerged to date from this Western evolutionary process is a set of extremely complex, technologically advanced, restless democracies which find themselves in serious competition with more authoritarian states which bypassed the democratic component but have adopted other parts of the Western template.

Co-existing with these two global models are a miscellany of states around the world which are trapped in various unstable, intermediate configurations. Many of these are failing or failed states measured in terms of economic and human development, personal security and the provision of basic services. South Africa is one of these.

It is barely more than 25 years since South Africa formally became a full constitutional democracy. Prior to that few South Africans had grown up and lived in a normative democracy with its internalised norms, values and perceptions. Black culture until a century ago had been traditionally hierarchical, tribal, kin-based and pre-scientific. In such societies the concepts of impersonal rule-based norms and the sanctity of private property had little meaning.

With the discovery of South African mineral wealth came more overtly colonialist policies and blacks became subject to the devastating impact of migrant labour and other socially disruptive influences. Later on the introduction of legislatively mandated Apartheid policies further exacerbated the social and family disruption, personal insecurity and exclusion from the market economy. These policies inculcated a traumatised and angry group identity and burning sense of injustice. None of this prepared the black community for Western democracy. Differing in only detail the other non-white communities in SA were equally traumatised and generally unprepared for the advent of democracy.

The whites also had not been subject to the political struggles, compromises and self-denials of normative democracy. They had become an ethnic aristocracy protected by law from competition and full co-existence with the majority of their fellow citizens.

These material and cultural realities did not only shape the perceptions and reactions of the ordinary citizen, but also those of the political elites now expected to govern within the constraints of a liberal constitution based on centuries of experience within the European hotbed of democratic evolution. This situation is not unique to South Africa but it is especially acute here and the ethnic dimension to these historical realities is self-evident.

The point of this brief introduction is not to provide justification for on-going ANC failure or outbreaks of DA insensitivity or to open the door to the recriminations of identity politics. But I wish to argue that the past is with us and needs to be addressed

In particular, I suggest, in the form of an exchange of correspondence below, that we do not have time to wait for the uncertainties and glacial pace of a hands-off racial policy. Rather we need to deliberately change the lived realities of South African citizens. In the words of Glen C Loury, a black American economist, "durable racial inequality is, ultimately, a cultural phenomenon." He goes on to say "Persistent racial inequality occurs when the social fact of racial identity limits access to developmental resources and the acquisition of human capital."

Rectifying this within South Africa needs to be made one of the foremost priorities of our policies - together with the restoration of economic viability and a clampdown on the malignant looting which has become a feature of South African political life.

It seems to me that the only party in South Africa which is equipped for this task is the Democratic Alliance (DA). While it too cannot avoid having been affected by the particular circumstances of South African history, its policies and values are those of a normative liberal democracy. It is the most multi-ethnic of the South African parties and has demonstrated in practice its adherence to democratic standards and capacity for delivery.

But to do so it will need to grasp the thorny nettle of our divided past. The South African population is ready for the decisive step forwards but is being held back by a leadership using the race card to hang onto power. The DA must take on the ANC in its racial backyard and offer all South Africans the chance for a better future. It is a moral as well as a pragmatic imperative.

Argument

Following my previous post (Politicsweb 7 March) in which the idea of racial redress was introduced I entered into correspondence with an anonymous commentator (COR). This has allowed me to elaborate on some specifics which were not previously discussed and to clarify potential misunderstandings.

COR.: The DA tried all the things you propose.  It was a dramatic failure.  There is no alternative to gradual progress in the politics of the long haul.  People must start understanding what the race obsession means and where it will end.

ME: I proposed very little. My article mostly set the scene and looked at the dilemmas race poses for a principled liberal party like the DA. I don’t think the statement “There is no alternative to gradual progress in the politics of the long haul” means anything and is simply unverifiable.

COR: My sentence means a lot.  The DA tried race transformation as a short cut, not once, but repeatedly, and every time it backfired.  There is no alternative but the slow chipping away of principle against the alternative (which will result in a horrible mess) and slowly, over a much longer period than we wanted, liberal principles may win out if enough South Africans are prepared to stay the course.

ME: What does “race transformation” and how long is “the course”? When will we know it’s over? If in 10 years we’ve failed does it mean the people have failed or policies have failed?  These are serious questions which need to be answered if we're to grasp the nettle of massive black inequality.

I'm arguing here that the DA has become too transactional rather than transformative in its new incarnation. It is indeed transformative in its goals but I believe the opportunity exists for the DA to adopt a more openly transformational form of public politics.

 Here are some historical examples of transformative leadership in practice that worked at least for a while. Nothing lasts forever.

1. Nelson Mandela (and maybe also de Klerk) in the 1990s. Perhaps if Mandela had been younger and had embedded his reconciliatory instincts into a more coherent philosophy of leadership (etc etc), we might be in a far better place than today. But that's all hindsight.
2. Kemal Ataturk for about 50 years.
3. Finland when it paid reparations to Russia (believe it or not), swallowed their pride and bent over backwards to allay Russian paranoia and fears – and emerged a Western democracy and rich.
4. Pim Fortuyn in Holland?
5. Zille in the DA
6. And innumerable examples in organisations (like Amazon) and initiatives like the Marshall Plan.

This is my understanding of the current DA strategy: it places before the South African people a model of honourable, capable, non-racial governance while opposing the ANC’s most destructive policies in the political and legal arenas. Largely below the public radar it is also attempting to redress the past through providing opportunity and mentoring to hitherto excluded (especially black) communities so as to equalise the SA playing field, hoping the electorate will turn to the DA for leadership as the ANC implodes; or some version of that scenario.

While these are admirable aims and policies what are the chances of success?  Is there sufficient urgency and potency in such a strategy to counter the entropic forces at work within South Africa? Nobody knows or can know for certain but it is worth looking at the ways it can fail. Here are some:

1. Nothing stays static. While the politicians fight it out the country is changing beneath their feet. Our economy is increasingly fragile and we’re running out of money. The criminalisation of SA creeps on and on.  Concepts of broad social solidarity and long-term perspectives keep getting weaker and the culture of short termism and self-interest keeps strengthening. Lawless protests become normalised. Woke identity dramas becomes embedded in SA academia and media and in the minds of the younger segment of the population. Outrage politics substitutes for real change. Inequalities persist and worsen.
2. The embattled ANC forms an alliance with the EFF – tacit or overt. They energise mobs, sabotage the Western Cape, replace Cyril with Ace (or equivalent). Country dips below the critical threshold. Maybe its already there.
3. We become Venezbabwe or balkanise – though I don’t see how we can unscramble our omelette without a form of civil war. We cross the point of no return for many generations.

What I’m trying to say is that South Africa may only have a short window of opportunity. We must seize the moment.  

This is my argument. The DA must surprise the ANC and energise the electorate. It must go for the electoral jugular. That emphatically does not mean dropping its current policies. It means adding something different and transformative.

So what does 'race transformation' (a phrase I did not use previously) mean in these circumstances? Here are some ideas:

1. Without renouncing its central mission, the DA must make the creation of the material and social conditions which will allow the excluded black masses to participate in an open-opportunity, capable society, like the Western Cape, a top priority.
2. Thus the DA's two absolute top priorities must be the economy and redressing the unequal racial legacies of Apartheid and a quarter century of ANC misrule.
3. This requires that the DA publicly commits to an urgent radical redress of racial deficits in employment opportunities, marketable skills, living conditions, nutrition, personal security and education.
4. In these terms its other top priority, national economic revival, is also essential to the upliftment of the poor and marginalised with a special emphasis on people of colour.
5. I would go further and introduce a system of voluntary reparations, which need not only be financial, for this purpose. This will allow the broad South African population (including the black middle and elite classes) to participate in the radical social solidarity project of empowerment and redress.
6. At the same time the DA must resist the abuse of identity politics which is solely designed to divide the country, to keep an extractive ANC-EFF in power and to advance the interests of the elite. It has nothing to do with the actual liberation of marginalised and impoverished communities.
7. The DA, therefore, must become the new radical liberation party while       remaining true to its constitutional, liberal, open-opportunity and entrepreneurial mission. These are not incompatible visions. It cannot allow a lawless, opportunistic organisation like the EFF to become the face of a false opposition or liberation in this country.
8. It is through such radical strategies that SA can enter the company of developed sustainable nations - but one in which all South Africans will feel equally at home.

Coda

I have focussed on the DA because it is inconceivable that the ANC (or EFF) has the capacity for radical reform while still in power, and amongst the opposition parties only the DA has the pedigree and critical mass to be viable as a national party. This does not preclude coalition politics but does require that the DA identify its core non-negotiables and priorities

Democratic politics is a multi-dimensional game more especially in such a diverse and conflicted society as South Africa. Policies cannot be focussed on a single dimension while neglecting others. The introduction of a more openly racial dimension will send ripples throughout the DA ecosystem and South African politics. These will need to be managed.

As pointed out previously, non-racialism combined with explicitly racial redress is an extremely tall order and I have no idea whether the DA has or could find the human and material resources to succeed. For South Africa's sake let's hope it can and elicit the broad public support it requires in these essential endeavours. This article is intended to contribute to the on-going re-evaluation of the DA's current strategy

Mike Berger