The DA, non-racialism and racial identity politics

12 August 2021

The personal is political, as the saying goes, so it seems apt to start this piece with an anecdote. In 1995, my mother transferred me to start attending a private primary school in Durban, which at that point in time was overwhelmingly white. To my recollection, all the teaching and administrative staff were white, and I was one of only two black African learners in the entire student body (as well as a handful of Indian learners).

Most of the other children came from wealthy families, judging by the cars they were dropped off and picked up with by their parents, while I used the school’s in-house bus service to get to and from school, which was largely used by the groundskeeping, janitorial and catering staff working at the school (all black as well, for the sake of contextual description) and a handful of other kids also from less well-off families.

The opulence of the school environment, its facilities, and other affluence-oriented offerings were intimidating in their culture shock factor (for example, a regular feature of Physical Education classes was golf coaching) but I was never uneasy in my 10-year old mind about being an island of melanin in a sea of white; rather it was the socio-economic contrasts between me and most of my peers that sometimes caused me mild distress.

However, we do live in South Africa, so it was inevitable that “racial stuff” would sometimes come up with some of the other kids, notions obviously picked up at home from racially prejudiced older relatives. The most stand-out incident to my memory was during an argument between an Indian boy and a white girl, during which the girl played what she no doubt thought was a ‘trump card’ of some kind by blurting out, “Well, at least I’m white!”

But this was the mid-1990s, and the narrative of the “New South Africa” and the building of a “Rainbow Nation” was riding high and strong, so for me the normative idea of non-racialism, and the insistence of not being primarily viewed through a racial lens or judged by my skin colour, but rather by my character and individual attributes, was extremely resonant and proved to be a potent sword and shield in responding to, and fending off, negative racial attitudes and rhetoric that occasionally reared their heads.

The point of that story is to explain why non-racialism as a socio-political value and belief is personally meaningful and deeply internalised for me, as a black person in South Africa, and this has carried through during my whole life in that I’ve always had a racially diverse social circle.

It also serves as a counterpoint to the seemingly de rigueur thinking these days that the natural, default and even solely acceptable outlook to hold as a progressive, politically conscious black person in South Africa is one rooted in racial identity politics, and flowing from that, one of supporting and advocating for race-based policies in every arena.

My deep-rootedness in non-racialism was a key reason for my being attracted to the Democratic Alliance (DA) in my early twenties, as a party that explicitly espoused non-racialism (without any countervailing racial rhetoric, as is the case with some parties who claim to be non-racial), and subsequently becoming and remaining a committed member for 16 years now.

It’s also why the seemingly two prevailing stances on non-racialism in much of South Africa’s socio-political discourse – its diminution or even negation, on one hand, and its stigmatisation and demonisation, on the other – have always been a challenge for me to understand.

It was always my understanding growing up that the anti-apartheid struggle was premised on the rejection of racial politics, race-based policies, and broadly speaking, the instrumentalisation and weaponisation of race; as well as the fact that it was historically the primary lens for the political governance and operation of South African society, leading to the construction and coerced enforcement of racial categories, racial hierarchies, racial preferencing, and racial exclusions.

For that is the only way in which race becomes and remains salient – it has to be actively foregrounded, amplified and reinforced to “be something” until that imposed system has racialised other social markers such as class, culture or religion (at which point it then becomes self-perpetuating), otherwise I believe the natural and organic way of things, generally speaking, is to end up with a District Six or a Sophiatown, where people mingle across colour lines, usually finding commonalities based on comparable class and cultural backgrounds.

This being an election year, it’s inevitable and expected that our critics and detractors have been ratcheting up their attacks on the DA, premised on trying to make it a bad thing that we are a non-racial party, and also advancing accusations of racism within the party. As for how one can be both non-racial and racist simultaneously, that paradox will be forever beyond my comprehension *insert confused expression meme here*…

A big problem is that many of those people do not understand what the DA means by non-racialism (or deliberately distort and misrepresent it), but rather than continually play “Whack-A-Mole” with DA detractors and critics for the next few months, I’d like to put forward a comprehensive articulation and defence of the DA’s non-racial stance, as well as questions for those critics and detractors to answer in every past and future attack piece:

The first point is to clarify that by non-racialism, we do not mean an ahistorical, naively denialist “Pollyanna” colour-blindness; we understand that race remains relevant in South Africa, but we take it for what it is – a construct – and we are clear that it will not be the lodestone of our work, or the lens of our worldview.

The DA is emphatically not blind to history, context and race in South Africa. Our Values Charter, contained in the DA Federal Constitution, explicitly acknowledges “the injustices suffered by previous generations” and that “the effects of the past are still felt”, therefore making one of our core principles “the redress of past discrimination” and “any disadvantages caused by our past”. The Diversity Clause, inserted into the DA Federal Constitution at our 2018 Federal Congress, also underscores this.

What we will not do however is to be held captive to history and race. Our non-racialism means that racial identity politics is not a pitch on which the DA will play, both as an intentional contribution to, and in eager anticipation of, the progressive realisation of true and substantive non-racialism. 

Secondly, and as a logical consequence of nailing our colours to the non-racial mast, we unambiguously reject all race-based policy, however well-intentioned, in favour of the old liberal slogan: "Merit, Not Colour". There is an entrenched argument in mainstream thinking and public discourse, which is assumed to be self-evident, that we inarguably need race-based redress and empowerment in order to undo the legacy of past race-based oppression and dispossession.

This generally takes concrete form in the championing of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) policy, and the narrative out there is that, "if BBBEE were only implemented 'properly and ethically', it would automatically and inevitably facilitate broad-based empowerment and shared prosperity".

However, a critical analysis of the mechanical operation of BBBEE shows this to be false, because the "effective implementation" of conventional empowerment scorecard elements would still exclude the vast majority of those needing genuine empowerment and economic opportunities. For example:

a) You need to be a business owner to benefit from Enterprise Development (and an established one at that to benefit from Supplier Development), 

b) You need to have a tertiary qualification to become part of company management and thus benefit from the Employment Equity/affirmative action component of BBBEE, 

c) You (generally) need to have passed Matric with above-average academic results and demonstrated aptitude for in-demand vocational and technical skills to benefit from the Skills Development component. 

In truth, BBBEE in its design, is effectively an empowerment policy for the black middle classes, as they are best positioned to benefit from the incentives created by the policy framework, but it does little for advancing truly broad-based empowerment that catalyses real social mobility from the very lowest socio-economic strata of the economically marginalised and locked-out, where the majority of people are black, young, poorly educated, unskilled, unemployed and unemployable.

This is because race is a blunt policy instrument and open to manipulation or distortion for narrow ends, as we have seen with multiple examples of BEE empowerment deals that amounted to crony elite enrichment, with the connected few gleefully double- and triple-dipping (or more) in enjoying the spoils.

Separate from its malignant mutations above, BBBEE has not created jobs, catalysed economic growth, or incentivised investment, so if advocates for the policy are in fact primarily interested in promoting Black Middle Class Economic Empowerment, then they must say so plainly and not hide behind the fig-leaf descriptor of “broad-based”.

My third point is that, as the DA, we do fully understand the need for, and stridently support, broad-based empowerment and redress measures to undo the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. This position is fleshed out and given shape and substance in our alternative non-racial broad-based empowerment model, which is premised on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The mainstream argument that we need race-based redress and empowerment in order to undo the legacy of past racial oppression and dispossession is one-dimensional and intellectually lazy. The mere fact of our colonial and apartheid history does not automatically or necessarily prove the merit of race-based policy to address those material conditions of poverty, unemployment and disadvantage that do overlap almost entirely with the black populace.

If anything, those material conditions make a strong case for the implementation of effective empowerment policies that directly target and remove the causes and drivers of structural disadvantage (what I believe the adherents of Critical Race Theory refer to as “systemic racism”), namely:

South Africa’s structural unemployment in a low-growth economy (those among us who have been paying attention for long enough, will remember the DA’s position in the early to mid-2000s that the term ‘BEE’ should stand for “Build & Expand Employment”);

Education, transport, healthcare and other services that are of poor quality; and, crucially,

The public sector mismanagement and corruption that divert taxpayer money from service delivery and infrastructure development for intended beneficiaries, into the pockets of corrupt and connected cronies.

The inconvenient truth for peddlers of race-based identity politics is that it will be effective non-racial governance and service delivery that will actually progressively and sustainably address the “race question” in South Africa. How so?

Because non-racialism, not just in rhetoric but in reality, can only be cultivated and entrenched by reducing and ultimately removing, systemically and sustainably, the current material conditions of racialised poverty and inequality that were created by past institutional racialism and racism, and which now provide fertile ground for race-based identity politics and polemical agitation, as we recently saw with the EFF’s outrageous march in Phoenix, Durban.

This clean and effective governance and delivery, implemented alongside our proposed redress-oriented empowerment policy, would automatically ensure that the beneficiaries are overwhelmingly black by directing resource distribution to the most objectively disadvantaged communities and individuals.

Every such empowerment-minded effort through government spending (and the incentives offered to the private sector for their charitable donations and social responsibility spending), from low-fee schools to the building of social services infrastructure (schools, clinics, hospitals, recreational and sporting facilities, etc) would be almost entirely in black communities, and public housing, NSFAS and social welfare beneficiaries would be almost entirely black.

Now, by virtue of my non-racial outlook and stance articulated above, it would be incongruent of me to forefront my race or attempt to trade with it as a currency of value, but let me suspend those beliefs temporarily for the sake of a thought experiment, and just pose a few questions that will stand as an ongoing litmus test for every instance of attack and criticism aimed at the DA:

Is the repeatedly recycled hullabaloo about the departure of former black DA leaders suggesting that those individuals were the totality of black leadership in the DA? And the rest of us black party members, leaders and public representatives still in the party are, what, chopped liver?

How do those who advance the “black leadership exodus” narrative concerning the DA rationalise their erasing the “blackness” of those of us committed to and still active in the DA, many of whom joined and have been active in the party for much longer than some of those who recently left?

Is the du jour race discourse, especially as has been weaponised against the DA, in fact accepting of all black people by pure virtue of being black, or is it a pick-and-choose, selective cafeteria buffet of only recognising and privileging their notion of Blacks Like Me? What are the requirements for attaining this “qualified franchise” of politically legitimate blackness?

Because as long as we’re assigning race-based political worth, then either the entirety of “blackness”, in its variations and diversity of being and expression, must be held to be valid, or the race-peddlers must then just be open and honest with us about the parameters and criteria for measuring and evaluating “true blackness”, which seemingly enables them to render invisible and negate the blackness of the members, staff and public representatives who remain in, and committed to, the DA.

Why is it that the DA’s supposed “whiteness” automatically neutralises the “blackness” of longstanding and committed DA members like me, rather than the converse applying where my “blackness” and that of my manifold black colleagues would automatically mitigate the supposed “whiteness” of the DA?

If the departure of a handful of black leaders from the DA supposedly says something about the party’s “whiteness” working to expel “blackness” from its midst, like an immune system would to a pathogen or incompatible organ transplant, then why are so many of us black leaders in the DA still content and committed to continue working in and through the DA to pursue the mission that attracted us to it in the first place, namely to contribute to building a political alternative to the ANC, leading to a more competitive party political landscape and political realignment?

It often seems that there are two streams of political outlook in South Africa: those who care about “race regardless of results or reason”, and those who care about “values and outcomes regardless of race”.

The hard truth is that the stark choice facing South Africans is not simply between the corrupt ANC or some caricatured version of the DA; it is actually a choice between living in a failed state with one-party hegemony, government arrogance, endemic cronyism and rampant corruption, OR working for political realignment that results in a competitive party political landscape.

Only the latter can strengthen accountability and achieve effective and responsive governance. And the DA as it really is -- a non-racial and liberal party -- lies at the heart of this endeavour.

By Zakhele Mbhele DA MP