My primary school rugby coach used to tell us, “Play the ball, not the man.” Mr Barkhuizen’s advice has stayed with me ever since, and I still try to live by it. A person is measured by the battles they choose to fight, and I’ve never had much time for pettiness or personal attacks. If you throw mud, you end up dirty yourself. It was John F. Kennedy who said that “the problem with radicals is not their views, but their intolerance.” Democratic maturity requires the willingness to tolerate those who disagree with you.
NP van Wyk Louw made a similar plea for what he called an “open conversation”: “The flow of ideas is to a nation what blood circulation is to the body. The flow of ideas involves freely expressing your opinion and listening attentively to other people’s views; it’s reciprocal…”
I must admit, however, that I recently forgot my old rugby coach’s lesson when Max du Preez claimed, among other things, that the leaders of the Solidarity Movement are not merely democratic opponents of the ANC, but are actively undermining the state. That’s an accusation of treason! That was only one of many insults. According to him, we are, naturally, racists who clung to apartheid in our youth and still long for its return. For historical reasons, playing the race card against Afrikaners remains an easy and popular tactic. It may be effective politics, but it is still dirty play.
Let me restate the obvious. We do not long for the South Africa of the National Party, but neither do we look forward to the future offered by the ANC. We do not want the “old” South Africa back, but neither are we content with the decaying “new” South Africa. That is why we are not working towards either the old or the new South Africa, but towards a different South Africa. We oppose the ANC, yet we love this country and all its people.
As a young student, I never believed the ANC would successfully govern a modern state. The Chinese philosopher Jia Yi explained the reason as early as the second century BC: the qualities required to wage a successful liberation struggle are fundamentally different from those required to govern a country successfully.
My concerns about South Africa’s new political dispensation were never rooted in opposition to democracy or freedom. On the contrary, they arose precisely because federalism is a prerequisite for sustainable democracy and lasting liberty. I saw the ANC as an equality movement disguised as a freedom movement, convinced that in its pursuit of equal outcomes it would ultimately place freedom itself at risk.
Democracy in Africa
Historian Martin Meredith captured my concerns well in Africa: 50 Years of Independence: “Africa’s political record since independence has been sobering. Over the course of three decades, not a single head of state allowed himself to be voted out of office. Of roughly 150 African leaders, only six relinquished power voluntarily, some only after decades in office. Among approximately 50 African states, almost all became one-party states or military dictatorships, while opposition parties were outlawed in 32 of them. Where elections were held, they largely served to legitimise the incumbent and reinforce the ruling party’s grip on power. Between 1960 and 1989, some 150 elections took place across twenty-nine African countries, yet opposition parties failed to win a single parliamentary seat. Only three countries – Senegal, Botswana, and the tiny Gambia – maintained multi-party systems and held regular free and fair elections”.
Socialism
The many conversations I had with COSATU leaders before 1994, several of whom would later occupy senior positions in government, convinced me that they remained committed to socialism. The words of Judge Jan Steyn have stayed with me ever since: “It is naive to believe that one can adopt the basic economic tenets of socialism, without also inheriting its authoritarian political structures and limitations of personal freedom. There is ample evidence to substantiate the argument that there is a real and unbreakable connection between economic and political freedom, both of which may be lost if the state unduly expands its role in society.”
Federalism
I was equally convinced that federalism was essential if a country as geographically vast and demographically diverse as South Africa was to be governed successfully. The liberal thinker Olive Schreiner expressed this brilliantly: “The special danger of centralized democratic States is always the tendency to fall a prey to the tyranny of sections, of large interests, or of strong individuals. The walls of each self-governing State [in a federation] are so many barricades, each one of which must be broken down before any oppressive over-domination can absolutely succeed; and, behind any one of which a successful resistance may take place when others have fallen. In short, federalism makes for freedom.”
Anger
I have no objection to people criticising us. That is part of democracy and part of the “open conversation” I referred to earlier. What troubles me, however, is the bitterness displayed by commentators such as Max du Preez. He is not simply trying to persuade his readers that we are wrong; he wants them to believe that we are evil. My own explanation of this: if we had merely been wrong, he would not be angry with us. He is angry because, in his view, we should never have been right about what an ANC government would ultimately mean for South Africa. His dreams have become nightmares, and now he blames those who warned that the storm was coming. It is rather like someone whose house has been washed away becoming furious with the weather forecaster, instead of acknowledging that he ignored every warning and took no precautions.
Conservatism
I understand Max’s opposition to apartheid. I grew up in a home where it was regarded as both morally wrong and fundamentally unworkable, and where people believed that a better alternative had to be found.
What I do find puzzling is that he continues to cling to ideas from a different era. Rather than confronting the root causes of South Africa’s deepening crisis, he remains preoccupied with its symptoms – corruption, maladministration, and state failure.
The fundamental mistake made by Du Preez and many of his contemporaries was that they never changed gears after 1994. They may dislike hearing this, but liberals who spent the 1980s dismantling an illiberal system should have become conservatives once constitutional democracy had been established. Instead, many remained intellectually trapped in the struggles of the past.
Few have expressed this necessity more eloquently than Samuel Huntington: “Historically, American liberals have been idealists, pressing forward toward the goals of greater freedom, social equality, and more meaningful democracy. The articulate exposition of a liberal ideology was necessary to convert others to liberal ideas and to reform existing institutions continuously along liberal lines.
“Today, however, the greatest need is not so much the creation of more liberal institutions as the successful defence of those which already exist. This defence requires American liberals to lay aside their liberal ideology and to accept the values of conservatism for the duration of the threat. Only by surrendering their liberal ideas for the present can liberals successfully defend their liberal institutions for the future.”
“Liberals should not fear this change. Is a liberal any less liberal because he adjusts his thinking so as to defend most effectively the most liberal institutions in the world? To continue to expound the philosophy of liberalism simply gives the enemy a weapon with which to attack the society of liberalism. The defence of American institutions requires a conscious, articulate conservatism which can spring only from liberals deeply concerned with the preservation of those institutions.”
“The American political genius is manifest not in our ideas but in our institutions. The stimulus to conservatism comes not from the outworn creeds of third-rate thinkers but from the successful performance of first-rate institutions.”
“Conservatism does not ask ultimate questions and hence does not give final answers. But it does remind men of the institutional prerequisites of social order. And when these prerequisites are threatened, conservatism is not only appropriate but also essential. In preserving the achievements of American liberalism, American liberals have no recourse but to turn to conservatism. For them especially, conservative ideology has a place in America today.”
The “Afrikaner Threat”
The so-called “Afrikaner threat” exists largely in the imagination of a small group of commentators. Strong, well-organised cultural communities are, alongside a free press, an independent judiciary, and a robust political opposition, essential counterweights to revolutionary movements that have lost their way.
The real tipping point for those commentators, who seem determined to tear down everything we are trying to build, came when we used our access to the US administration to urge it not to punish South Africa simply because it disagreed with the ANC government. To many on the political left, Donald Trump embodies everything they oppose in a single individual: he is white, Western, male, conservative, capitalist, Christian, powerful, and willing to exercise that power. They cannot attack him directly, so they cast us as his proxies and direct their hostility towards us instead.
Normality
Our vision is to build a strong cultural ecosystem that enables Afrikaners to continue living freely, securely, and prosperously in Africa. We believe this is the only way in which we can make a lasting contribution to the well-being of both South Africa and all its people. Our ambition is remarkably modest. We simply want to restore a sense of normality and, in doing so, help make this country a better place for everyone.
By Flip Buys, chairperson of the Solidarity Movement.
