Growing globally, there is a common understanding between modern liberals and democratic socialists. But this tendency is unfortunately not replicated in South African politics. I've always wondered why.
The recent article by James Myburgh entitled "The problem with South Africa" provided a clue (see here).
One of the Bloggers commenting on Myburgh's piece said there seem to be a ‘general anatomy of discontent' in our country at this particular moment. I couldn't agree more. In fact Myburgh's article is part of that general anatomy of our discontent over our political situation.
It is one thing to disapprove of regressive tendencies in political parties if they can be shown to be serving the interests of the elite in government. It is appropriate to highlight such tendencies if they serve to promote a particular race, group or class of person unfairly.
However, it is quite another thing to promote unfair status quo in the name of merit.
Of course, governments that interfere through special (corrective) measures are imposing artificial trends on the natural spontaneous order. And yes these interventions could lead to numerous forms of abusive if not checked by proper regulation and effective monitoring.
The case of Black Economic Empowerment comes to mind where white business has sought to disguise itself behind the flimsiest of black corporate veils. Thankfully, the verification process is being jacked up and this aberration of Black empowerment is in the process of being corrected. But the point is that if you respect the use of state power, and these days all but the most libertarian or anarchistic do, then the issue should not be that the state is messing with the "natural order of thing", but what order are they seeking to create and why?
I've extensively canvassed the falsity of the argument in relation to so-called level playing fields, in that the alleged "merit" system is actually a most uneven playing field due to artificial interferences of the past. All but the most disingenuous would agree that the access to opportunities presented to the typical Constantia residing child are far in excess of those presented to the typical Khayelitsha residing child.
To try to lobby for a system that further rewards the Constantia child with the label "meritorious" due to the combined effect of their birthright, private education and normative bias thwarts the sum total of all the measures enacted by the post-Apartheid state. This is the reason why such arguments make me nervous, regardless of how eloquently they are framed.
Corrective measures are necessary to redress the artificially created situation which was born with the advent of colonialism within South Africa, consolidated during the Union, and matured under the ignoble banner of Apartheid: otherwise we will never attain the professed goal of equality of opportunity for all.
I fully concede political deployment has lead to many problems in our public service, due to the fact that, not only is it a system which is open to abuse by opportunists, but because, sadly, there is an actual lack of skill amongst some of those who are black and connected to the ruling party's deployment masters.
Part of our historical problems remain in the fact that capable black minds were kept well away from the workings and machinations of the Apartheid state, lest they gained some insight and ideas. The point is that, most of our current problems even when not necessary blamed but can be linked to the same historical issues alluded to above.
This brings us to Myburgh's fundamental problem which he correctly identifies as transformation: "At the core of many of our problems today is the ethos that ‘transformation' has [been] allowed to spread and take hold across our society."
As a black man my internal alarm went off here. This where the chasm emerges between most black people and the typical white South African.
Lest I'm misunderstood, let me make it clear that I believe all people with a progressive spirit, black or white, subscribe to the notion of a genuinely responsible government. They are keen for government to foster the relative freedom of its citizens; to set up transparent and (to the best of their ability) impartially applied rules that provide a more or less predictable reaction to personal choices regardless of social station; to block any notion of a privileged access to the law or application of the law; to provide security for all; to protect contracts and private property where they were entered into in a fair and informed manner, and all the other buzz words we mention when we talk about an open society or progressive government.
I would expect a black person that aspires to such a form of government to have a problem with the ANC because of the simple fact that, despite its achievements and rhetoric, it has failed to transcend liberation politics and transform itself into a democratic and progressive party.
But here is where I believe white liberals and black social democrats part: to aspire to an open and progressive society for a black person does not mean they think individualism is the pinnacle of progression, especially where it conflicts, or hinders, the collective vision of the people, the country or other social assumptions on which the health of their nation depends. This must not be mistaken to mean that black people want us to go back to the Borg Hive, where submersion of the individual will and agency occurs for the purported "greater good." Let's break this down within a liberal Rights discourse.
Liberals are unduly concerned with the personal, the individual, the Right. Black democrats still carry much of their traditional heritage. That which liberals will describe as "need", black people would regard as a "collective right." I cannot profit from my Right if to do so will cause harm to my People, i.e. will impact negatively upon their ability to achieve their needs (at least that's the traditional ideal when not hampered by greed). I think this is the point that too many liberals have yet to even engage with.
Myburgh makes the right example, for all the wrong reasons, by citing the president of the ANC Youth League, Julius Malema, as the apex of what is wrong with the aspirations of the majority of our youth in this country. His error results in him failing to appreciate why Malema is popular among the majority of our black youth. Malema, to them, is the defying spirit of the nihilistic condition they grew up amongst, the proof that their opinion counts because they hear it uttered from the mouth of the most influential youth leader of the day.
Of course, his very influentialness is founded upon lack of depth, of deeper understanding of the complexities in resolving historical unbalances. Nevertheless, Malema's provoking frankness makes it very easy for the marginalised black youth to relate to his message and warm to his cause.
It's almost the same feeling black South Africans get from listening to rap music-it provokes the spirit by illustrating succinctly the fact that ‘the system' was not designed with you in mind; it doesn't want you, and it won't regard you. So the answer is to pay it in kind, upset it; turn it upside down and take it to the devil to gain some attention.
I don't suppose that is easy to understand for any white person, especially white South Africans who are mostly caught up in the interplay between whiteness and middleclassness that has the effect of making them irritatingly inwardly looking and slightly schizophrenic bunch that is obsessed with looking at the world only through their own lenses.
Malema has been made into a hero by black youth because he speaks unambiguously about black marginalised pride. Now, because of this platform, they relate to his issues and they make them their own because he has the ability to show the middle finger to what they despise - the system. Naturally this self-same system has worked to the advantage of a white South African, so it is not very surprising to see them resist change by wanting to keep the status quo.
For them, when they are feeling insecure, socio-economic transformation threatens their comfort zone, and an angry black child is the thing that makes for their nightmares.
Perhaps every white person should do themselves a favour by reading, at least once, Jean-Paul Sartre's introduction to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth: "Our victims know themselves by their scars and by their chains, and it is this that makes their evidence irrefutable."
What Myburgh completely misses is that the real danger for our nation is the very nihilistic tendencies in our youth gaining popularity and momentum that could fester into violent tendencies within even relatively right minded black people when they are perpetually faced by claims that they are less than capable, less than worthy and, in actual fact, the "real" problem with this country.
This sneering attitude against transformation, shared by far too many white South Africans who find purchase in sort of things like Myburgh's article is one of our major problems in this country. For an editor of a supposedly progressive journal like Politicsweb to comfortably allude that our racial imbalances as the ‘legacy of colonialism and apartheid' is an unsubstantiated claim, worries me greatly.
Are we to believe that Myburgh does not believe that the racial imbalances in this country are the result of colonialism and apartheid? If so, then we have a far more serious problem than initially thought?
Coming back to Myburgh's right argument with the wrong substantive backing, we can look at the recent statements by the General Secretary of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe, talk about deploying ‘competent cadres' to civil service.
Deputy President Motlanthe also is said to be part of the same body that is supposed to match up cadre with competence in the public service vacancies. Let's pretend we believe all that. Why stop there? Why not follow the good idea as espoused by COPE, the only party within the South African political scene that is genuinely advocating a professional, permanent, non-partisan public service.
This is in keeping with a British pre-Thatcher ideal, where an objective, non-partisan civil servant implements the policy of the day with the Government Minister not caring what the servant's political opinions are, because they are private and do not impact upon the servant's implementation of policy.
The DA, from the empirical evidence presented by their actions upon taking over the City of Cape Town and then the Western Cape Provincial Government, appear to me to be in agreement with the ANC on the issue of nomenklatura, or the deployment of senior and middle management, favouring the American system, where a change of Administration necessitates a purging those who do not share the political philosophy of the new "masters."
Is political deployment different from ‘cadre deployment'? I'd argue yes, and Myburgh is correct when he says the latter has become a promotion of party lackeys to position of power without necessarily the qualifications or experience. But the notion of a partisan public servant must not be sneered at when they are deployed by the ANC, then claimed to be neutral and "meritorious" when deployed by the DA. They are two sides of the same subjective coin.
It would appear to me that the crucial thing is for the debate to occur within the context of whether we want an objective, permanent, independent public service, in the manner that COPE is promoting, or whether we want a partisan, linked to the party in power, a dependant public service a la the ANC and the DA? Of course this debate will be difficult for some to contextualise, as we have never actually had an independent public service! However, I think it would be worth our while trying to imagine such a thing.
My final issue with Myburgh, which I add as a parting shot, is the daring audacity to correlate the racist, Nationalistic, elitist, Broderbond, cruel and scurrilous men who ran the apartheid regime to that of the ANC government. I know this is a growing tendency among the white chattering class and I personally find it disgusting and insensitive to those who lost their lives and those of loved ones under that nefarious system. There is no comparison between Apartheid and now.
No one is forced to like the ANC, indeed in all its history I suspect this is the time it is most repelling. But we must not hide bogus feeling of suspicious intent with our hate for the ANC. We need to find fresh analysis, not sickeningly contrived analogies.
The ANC might, in recent years, have grown vulgar and crude but to call them pervasively discriminatory is an exaggeration. Even the public service discrimination many white people cry out against has never been its official position, or chronicled as its practice.
Conclusion
The problem with white South Africans in general is that they put too little value on social justice. Obviously they don't see any means of putting objective value on social grievances. They crowd out the importance of individuals as contributing members of society. Their political philosophy recognises only individualistic rights (especially that of individual fulfilment) and suppresses more collectivist rights, i.e. going beyond the necessity of positivist legal functioning to the necessary collective. Therefore they are trapped within the basic liberal error of locating all responsibility and agency at the level of the individual and arbitrary (legal) state.
Social Democrats understand the debt we owe to early liberal thinking but we have now developed it beyond the schizophrenia of individuals re society, by realising that human beings can exist concurrently as individuals and contributing members of a society. For us, the general society is the platform that feeds and nurtures the individual which is, in turn, fed back into nourishing the communal. Simply stated, it is impossible to have one healthy at the expense of the other, as is apparent by the problems faced now, and historically, by the South African state. Therefore, we urgently need to find a way of going beyond this stasis of general discontent, the cynicism conveyed by the likes of Myburgh, and become proactive citizens.
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