The Last Whites of Africa
Saturday is a slow news day for local media. Bored, I
clicked on Politicsweb which I hadn’t looked at since April. I had given up on
it, put off by its pandemic denialism and white right victimhood. I was
determined not to read it again, but looking for news, thought perhaps things
had changed a little, its writers if not commentators.
But everything
is still the same. On Saturday September 19’s issue, above the virtual fold
(top half of webpage), was William
Saunderson-Meyer column where he wrote Donald Trump “deserved” the Nobel
Prize (a right-wing Norwegian journalist nominated him) for his role in the rapprochement
between Israel, Bahrain and UAE!
Andrew Donaldson,
always trying too hard to be amusing, cheered a little known group who want independence
for the Western Cape (in his column last year he explained away the Group Areas Act in Cape Town as a "shortage of land" [sic]). Fittingly ironic for one who now lives in isolationist Brexit Britain (a so-called satirist, he and Politicsweb's contributors don't get irony). Apropos nothing, he made fun of UCT law academic Pierre
de Vos’ height, who criticised the campaign in his blog. (BizNews banned me for
satirically making fun of it and Politicsweb’s ever facile and offensive commentator,
Geoff Coles. I guess it’s okay when columnists insult people.)
And to complete
the straight, there was Jeremy Gordin,
rambling and self-referential as usual, questioning the lockdown (a “bazooka to the economy”) and
pandemic, which is an issue for Politicsweb’s contributors, with his version of
denialism. (Further down the page was an op-ed by the DA’s petulant and
ineffectual – and country’s highest paid matriculant – John Steenhuisen about
the lack of need for the lockdown).
The racist,
right-wing commentators are still there – Ingrid, Geoff, Sad Days, etc – with
their mastubatory rants and ripostes about the ANC, left, liberals and still pining
for apartheid that’s forever lost (RIP and good riddance!). Of course, these
include the crazies with their anti-science theories, conspiracies and
dangerous cures for Covid. In other words, a normal day for Politicsweb.
But the pleasant surprise
was editor and publisher James Myburgh’s article How
I came to understand the ANC. Myburgh is a thoughtful and insightful writer
and analyst when he sticks to his specialism politics and avoids right-wing conspiracies
and matters where he has no expertise like the pandemic.
The blurb says “Myburgh writes on his intellectual journey
towards making sense of the ruling party” and is an “edited version of the
preface to the Last Jacobins of Africa:
The ANC and the making of modern South Africa (Politicsweb Publishing,
2020).”
Former DA researcher and freelance journalist Gareth van
Onselen’s fulsome praise is included: “Let me tell you, this book is one of –
if not the – definitive analysis of the Mbeki presidency. It is brilliant. An
absolute must read for anyone interested in politics”.
The self-published book is a reworking of Myburgh’s Oxford
University PhD thesis about Thabo Mbeki’s presidency. The article – the preface
to the book – describes how it was the “product of a decade-long attempt to
make sense of the African National Congress in power”.
It starts with him employed as a DA researcher after he
graduated from University of Cape Town in 1997, to his slow, growing understanding of Mbeki, ANC
and their National Democratic Revolution ideology as a doctoral student and his
not-so startling realisation of what they were about.
He writes how the DA and then leader Tony Leon tackled Mbeki
and ANC about cadre deployment and black-centred affirmative action that
displaced whites from government jobs and Mbeki’s HIV/AIDS denialism which was
tacitly supported by the ANC and most of the country’s media, or at least Mbeki
and ANC weren’t vocally criticised about it.
While Myburgh’s research for the DA and as a doctoral
student gave him insight most outside the ANC and professional analysts didn’t
have, they weren’t the only ones critical of the party and direction it was
taking. For example, in correspondence with ANC MP and veteran Ben Turok in the
late ‘90s, I told him the black empowerment policy was a problem and not
suitable to advance economic development of target groups and country. He agreed,
saying I was well-informed – he meant too well-informed for a non-ANC – and
patronisingly that I should join the ANC. (At that time I also wrote to Leon
about the DA’s policies to which he replied.)
In 1997, with an honours degree in economics (early 1994),
incomplete engineering degree and six years experience as an engineer, I had
been unemployed for three years from August 1994 (I had taken a three-month sabbatical
– exhaustion leave really – but afterwards couldn’t find work in the New South
Africa).
In 1996 University of Cape Town rejected my applications for master’s degrees in
economics and health economics. They didn’t say why (in 2008 I completed a MPhil in Urban Management). Although depressed about
my penury and bleak employment prospects, which in part was due to affirmative
action – employers wanted blacks despite at that time few qualified blacks
available, graduate and otherwise – I still had a realistic, hopeful belief the
country had a future but it would take a while and not overnight as ANC
supporters including liberal-left and media naively believed.
By 1997 I was an almost full-time volunteer in four projects including as leader. This happened by accident rather than
design as I was looking to fill my day and “wanted to give back”. This was the start
of my social and political interest and activism which had been largely absent
until then.
It ran almost parallel to Myburgh’s political education journey
at the same time (I’m older than he, though), he in academic research and me community
activism. He had (has) a more sophisticated, technical political knowledge from
the inside than most but lacked the grassroots perspective that’s a failing of
most analysts who have book knowledge only. It includes politicians who forgot
their activism days if they ever had it. The DA and white politicians are among
the latter who’re seldom involved in direct community work and, therefore,
don’t sound convincing and frequently come across as condescending know-alls.
I wonder how 23 year-old Myburgh, with no experience and out of UCT, got
a job as a researcher for the DA. He, DA and whites still complain about black
economic empowerment and cadre deployment but he got his job as a result of the
DA’s white affirmative action. DA finance spokesman Geordin Hill-Lewis got his
first job straight out of university in 2009 as Premier Helen Zille’s chief of
staff – an executive post – and thereafter was promoted to Parliament despite
lacking experience, which is evident today in many of his naive and uniformed statements
(he’s not unique, though, in any party). John Steenhuisen, Mmusi Maimane,
Lindiwe Mazibuko and numerous DA members at national, provincial and local
politics – Cape Town City’s then inexperienced 32 year-old Xanthea Limberg an
example of the latter – too benefitted especially where more qualified
candidates of all races were available.
The ANC’s race-based employment and empowerment policies are
unjust, bad laws that quickly served their purpose and ought to have been
discontinued long ago. But it’s hypocritical of Myburgh and DA to complain
about them.
His account of how he came to publish Last Jacobins of Africa goes on to describe how in August 2006 NB
Publishers, a division of Naspers, invited him to submit the manuscript of his
thesis as a book (he had just received his degree). They sent the draft to two
readers. According to the reports
Myburgh received, one was negative, the other positive about the work. But both
recommended it not be published. Myburgh couldn’t understand, and NB never gave
him an answer, why they declined because the reports were contradictory. And NB
had already offered him a contract based on the merits of the initial chapters
he submitted.
In 2007 he established Politicsweb. “I was motivated, in
part, by this experience of being blocked from being able to publish important
research by anonymous gatekeepers with opaque motives.”
Myburgh ends his account – the preface to the book – correctly
saying “most South Africans have grown up immersed in ANC’s racial ideology”
and accept the “various myths to explain South Africa’s predicament from within
the ideological tradition responsible for it”. He writes many of the problems –
“the evils we witness today”, arguably exaggerated evils he doesn’t specify –
are a result of the ANC’s actions after coming to power.
There’s no dispute the ANC and most of its leaders are
irremediably venal, corrupt and incompetent partly as a result of their
backward and backward-looking nationalist and racist ideology and partly
because immorality and disrespect of the law is part of their and South
Africa’s culture.
But Myburgh dissembles and is disingenuous. The past doesn’t
excuse the present, but he and most whites remain unaffected by the “evils” he
mentions, are beneficiaries of historical colonial and apartheid privilege and
hanker for and expediently use ANC malfeasance, neglect and ineptitude as the
excuse to want the return of the purported halcyon days of apartheid when all
was allegedly good and clean and white and simple while retaining the numerous
legal, social and economic advantages of a constitutional democracy.
The appeal
for an independent Western Cape – allegedly a “well-run bubble” (IRR’s Frans
Cronje) – “independent” Afrikaner enclave Orania and AfriForum are manifestations of this right-wing delusion. They see themselves as The Last White Africans, keepers of the democratic flame.
I believe, especially since 2018 when it introduced a new, focused
funding model, Politicsweb shifted to the right. It has become the right's and especially far-right’s leading
media platform. It’s associated with conservative BizNews and “think-tank” IRR and
its media site Daily Friend whose members regularly write for it. The notorious
David Bullard, who a few months ago issued a blatantly racist tweet about
blacks and was even fired from Daily Friend for it, still has a column on Politicsweb. (Bullard was unrepentant about the tweet, and in a comment on 2oceansvibe called me a “prick”, later changed to “male member” when I criticised him for it. He claimed he had received support from his neighbours for his tweet.)
Under the false flag of freedom of speech, Politicsweb permits
racist, bigoted and at times threatening comments against those who disagree
with the right herd mentality. This includes Myburgh's defence of Bullard to his donors Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom who gave him an ultimatum to either fire Bullard or they would terminate Politicsweb's funding (since 2011).
Myburgh, like Bullard's defenders, said the world misunderstood Bullard's use of the “K-word” when he only meant “kleptocrat”. Bullard knew and meant what he was saying despite his and his supporters' later qualification because, as FNF responded, in South Africa it means only one thing. Of course Myburgh knows that too because he contradicts himself saying the tweet was inadvisable and he was unhappy about it. FNF's Cecelia Kok:
“Politicsweb is choosing to continue to purchase and publish the articles of an author of an unapologetically racist tweet [Bullard]. Dr Myburgh has elected to stand by Mr Bullard. In doing so,
Politicsweb has chosen to deviate from the very purpose – promoting liberal thought – that gave rise to the longstanding association that the FNF has enjoyed with Politicsweb. Politicsweb is of course free to do so, but so too is the FNF at liberty to take the position that if
Politicsweb considers racist expression to be a species of acceptable liberal expression, it warrants our support no longer (emphasis).”
In his response to FNF Myburgh said “I find cancel culture an anathema”. But Politicsweb does ban people who have an alternate or critical views from commentating like its partner
BizNews does (to be fair, most local media do so too but from the leftist,
politically correct position) despite claiming to be champions of free speech. So it’s hypocrisy to complain about being
“blocked by anonymous gatekeepers with opaque motives”.
For full disclosure, I submitted op-eds to Politicsweb from
2016 to 2018. Almost each one was published until without explanation Myburgh
stopped. (Ironically he complains NB Publishers gave no explanation why they
declined to publish his book to which he attributes nefarious motives.) My “excellent” (his words) fact-based pieces were well-written and researched and above the
standard of even the country’s professional writers and analysts (the bar is
low, though).
One time Myburgh asked me to excise a sentence to an article,
not because it was defamatory or inaccurate or the content hadn’t already been
expressed by me and others before, but that his enemies would allegedly use it
against him because they didn’t like what Politicsweb was doing. I guess to him
it meant speaking truth to power. He published after I objected, though, and
challenged him either to remove the offending sentence that would be on him, with a note to its
exclusion, which he said he couldn’t do, or not publish.
In early 2018 he declined to publish a critique of Helen
Zille, DA and the universally accepted corrupt NPA, not because what I wrote
was a lie, but because he implied I was defamatory (the facts were indisputable)
and he would allegedly get into “trouble” with the Press Council. He never responded or posted the last couple of articles I submitted. (For
information, I wasn’t paid. I wrote because I liked it, so not
having them published was no loss.)
I suspect my independent, liberal position where I often criticised
Politicsweb’s informal patron and associate Zille who shares a mutual
admiration of Myburgh – she briefly was a policy member of the IRR of which he
is a council member – and DA was politically inconvenient and inconsistent with
the neo-conservative movement he, Zille and DA are part of (Politicsweb, Daily
Friend and BizNews are the conservative/right’s unofficial media platforms). It’s
an ideological position Zille and DA (the IRR reportedly had a strong role
influencing their policy direction) wholeheartedly adopted since her election
as national leader.
According to Myburgh’s admirers Jeremy Gordin and BizNews’
Alec Hogg, he has an almost supernatural analytical ability. Myburgh writes well
and interestingly and his arguments are usually cogent, that is, when he sticks
to what he knows – politics. But he loses the plot when he ventures outside his
expertise and into fact-free white victimhood and conspiracy fantasy like
pandemic denialism and alleged white farmer genocide.
Therefore, his, DA and others’, for example, any of IRR’s
writers, protests sound hollow. The ANC’s excesses and mistakes are no excuse
for them to have abandoned the liberal democracy project and enter the realm of
the demagogic, bellicose and secessionist right-wing movement.
The Last Jacobins of Africa
seems interesting. But as NB Publishers and its readers said, it was too
historical and not topical, except as an academic book. If it was so more than
a decade ago, it’s even more now. The chapter outline Myburgh describes don’t
include developments after 2001 (he mentions the arms deal in passing). By now
its focus of the years 1997 to 2001 is too narrow. Mbeki is a footnote, hardly
mentioned and almost entirely forgotten today.
Also, by now most people either know what happened before
and during the Mbeki era or don’t care, it having been replaced in the
spotlight by Jacob Zuma, state capture and the faltering and weak incumbent
Cyril Ramaphosa.
And of course, there’s the coronavirus pandemic and its
global economic, health and social impacts which swept almost every other
concern aside, a pandemic the right deny.
Ironically for Myburgh, he wants us to understand and remember
how the ANC came to be, but the nebulous group he belongs to – conservatives, classical liberals, rightist, right-libertarians or whatever name they call themselves –
choose to forget their ideology in its pure, “evil” form (evil used in the
correct way here), its members immersed in their own myths (to paraphrase him),
was the only one in South Africa
preceding the ANC’s.
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