I’m happy to report that everything worked out in the end. It didn’t work, or at least it didn’t work as well as it could have. Racism, like any addiction, is continually reinvented. In the case of South Africa, after gaining power in 1994 through a corrupt political elite under the banner of the African National Congress, racial discrimination was simply reversed, with wealthy black cronies in employment, educational opportunities, and contracts. and their children were given legal preferential treatment. Nothing has exacerbated South Africa’s race relations problems and pushed high skills overseas more than this policy, which systematically prioritizes race and patronage over considerations of merit. It did not work, and unlike its Afrikaner predecessors, the ANC failed miserably to uplift its poorer compatriots through a growing economy. Reverse racism turns out to be a zero-sum game.
The terrible cost of this neglect was that in May this year, the ANC lost its parliamentary majority and was forced into the so-called Government of National Unity (GNU), which in reality It is a grand alliance representing two-thirds of the United States. Voters came together in an uneasy alliance between the ruling party, liberals, mavericks, and traditionalists. Another quarter were left behind, rallying around the two main opposition parties, the recently emerged Zulu-based Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and the Economic Freedom Fighters, the latter a faded Gucci revolutionary movement. They are the remnants of racists, xenophobes, and anti-constitutionalists. They are now competing with real people in MK, people who actually start a revolution.
The founding principle of this very good constitution, enshrined in Chapter 1, is the concept of non-racialism, which has plagued South Africa for decades. It embodies the liberal democratic ideal that a person’s worth and life opportunities should be determined by character, not skin color, and that state institutions should reflect that self-evident truth. Non-racism is a credo of the political elite, endlessly supported by prominent figures in the ruling party and liberal elements in the opposition.
However, there is little basis in the current South African reality. Consideration of racial identity affects all employment, investment, and policy decisions. Public policy issues rarely lead to racial conflicts. Appointing qualified white people to high-level positions does not expose them to criticism of being “anti-change.” Announcement of national sports teams that were not criticized for ‘lack of representation’. Careless words and actions that were not maliciously turned into racial issues by politicians. Is this a temporary feeling of fatigue? As unlikely as it is, racial preferential treatment is now so deeply ingrained in the national psyche that it is difficult to see its early demise. What was once a modest demand by black South Africans for equality of opportunity has now become an unattainable equality of outcome. It is a well-worn solid color that has been universally replicated.
In May, South African voters voted overwhelmingly on racial lines. Support for the African National Congress was 98% African, Umkhonto we Sizwe 99.4% and Economic Freedom Fighters 97.6%. The exception is the liberal Democratic Alliance, which, although majority white, has a better representation of other races and is the only ‘non-racial’ of South Africa’s major parties. The DA has always fought to win the support of more than a fifth of voters, but in May only 4.2% of African voters supported the DA, reducing prospects for near-term change. It seems so. The solemn lesson of the past three and a half centuries, and especially the past three decades, is that non-racialism is, and always has been.
“The solemn lesson of the past three and a half centuries, and especially of the past three decades, is that non-racial discrimination was, and never has been, the beginning.”
And yet societies and nations lurch forward, often precariously, sometimes deliberately, and sometimes miraculously.
