Liberal Equivocations

Liberal politics in South Africa, on top of their bankrupt political vision, have an uncanny habit of working themselves into tight a corner. First it was the DP (Democratic Party) ‘Fight Back’campaign during the 1994 South African democratic election whose cynical tone rubbed most black South Africans the wrong way. Then in 1999, the DP merged with NNP (New National Party) to become DA (Democratic Alliance), and could only come up with a bland ‘South Africa Deserves Better’ slogan to fight elections with much success.

In the recent weeks the DA has been embroiled in leadership crisis. Tony Leon, its former leader of paradigmatic liberal confusion and dodgy enthusiasms, decided after close to two decades to call it quits. He left three real contesters for the leadership position, Hellen Zille (also the current mayor of Cape Town), Anthol Trollip (the leader of DA in the Eastern Cape Province), and Joe Seremane (a senior black leader who is now the chairman of the party). I'm of the opinion that if the DA was serious about attracting black votes, which it desperately needs, it would have, at the least, voted Anthol Trollip—who has better empathic concern for black issues—as its leader. But they voted Hellen Zille.

It seems to me whatever the DA does betrays its non adept spirit in keeping the finger to the wind and the ear on the ground about what is happening in South Africa generally. I'll be honest enough to conceed that the black candidate, Joe Seremane, brought nothing to the DA leadersip table except the colour of his skin, and telltale politeness? He thought he could strategically put himself to attrack black votes and showcase how serious the DA is with transformation. What did he get in return? A humiliation of being put in a decorative position where he must wait for tasks from his master, or madam in this case. Since this is not the noble era where heroes fall on their swords instead of enduring the humiliation of being leakeys for the whims of their masters, I guess Seremane will, henceforth, be his madam's negligeé, never showing in public except during windy days.

Most black people, like myself, who respect liberal values without necessary extending the same feeling for liberals in general, watched the DA leadership race with a sinking feeling. Hellen Zille's article, at the Mail and Guardian (May 4 to 10 2007), compounded the feeling. I had hoped madame Zille's style of leadership would move away from Tony Leon's cloying contrariety politics of attachment to the ANC (African National Congress), into clear independent vision for the DA party this time. The article dashed those hopes. Madame Zille seem to have inherited Mr. Leon's gestalt. Perhaps she is too inured in politics of counter ANC excessive autonomism with her street-tough talk, a snappy wit, and inbuilt bullshit detector. Beyond that she brings nothing much in the table if the article at the Mail and Guardian is anything to go about. Her raising of dust and exhibitionist persona, irreverent honest raucousness—too often mistaken for vividness—will not work very well in the national arena. All she'll do is alienate further much needed black votes. Madame Zille's article was as fragmented as the political vision of the DA. She begins it by quoting Groucho Marx's saying, whose context I failed to understand: “I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”

In the national arena the DA needs someone who can speak vigorously and frankly about racial issues, be it in liberal cultural allusions. At the same time someone who understands the curdled aggression of black majority against the past. Someone who could calm the country's murderous odour, so to speak. But Madame Zille, in the DA tradition, seem to refuse to recognise, or at least downplay, the “axial lines” of a South African politics: that racism is endemic in the political attitudes and structures of the country, whether unwittingly or deliberate. That most South Africans stand in polarised poles, either getting their reality like a man trying to drink at a hydrant—to sharpen Frost's trope—or avoid the evaluation of our situation in favour of haughty squeamishness.

There's a great diversity of morbid symptoms in DA and ANC politics, but I'll here limit myself to DA's politics. Madame Zille admits that the ANC's discussion documents towards its 52nd National Conference are toned down from previous years, with what she ironically calls “a hint of ambiguity” without ideas. What new ideas does she or the DA bring then? She proceeds to tabulate her party's alternative vision against the ANC's “national democratic revolution.” She in turn calls her party's vision, “Open, Opportunity Society” (the use of capital and non capital letters is hers). The apercu of the “Open, Opportunity Society” is personal freedom, informed choices, relaxed labour laws and laissez-faire, federalism, meritocracy in public appointments, hard stance on crime and corruption, social transformation through education, and all and all. Most of us have heard it ad nauseam before.

What's new is madame Zille's emphasis on glaring contradictions of her party. For instance, she says; “The state can and should intervene to prevent extreme poverty, to protect everyone from crime and abuse . . .” On the same breath she quotes the liberal economist Friedrich Hayek; “governments that try to use their power to correct inequalities will invariably create new and worse inequalities while undermining the rule of law.” Well, which is it really gonna be madame, laissez-faire or state intervention? Or the government must do the dirty work so long as it does not touch the sacred economic mechanics of the country?

South Africa, for a real opposition, needs a party that'll create a platform for civil humanity without strengthening cynical political discourse. A party that'll be able to organize those who shy away from the domination of one cultural and political hegemony for commitment to democratic universalism—universalism that does not necessary mean uniformity. A party of human rights universalism without any trace of double standards. Of universalist appeasement and liberal cosmopolitanism that puts party sovereignty in submission to individual freedom. DA, as a liberal party, purports to be of such persuasions. Where is the problem then?
On the other page of the same Mail and Guardian issue Tony Leon, on an interview, prefers to blame the DA's inability to attract black votes on what he terms “the prominence of identity politics over issue politics in South Africa”. It would take too long to unravel the overt racist superiority attitude behind such reasoning. Leon treats black South Africans as if unable to identify what is in their interest. I wonder if he knows the spiritual resillence needed not to hate those whoose foot is on your neck; the greater miracle of perception and sacrifice black people continue making to allow South Africa to grow into its own despite the intransigence and ignorance transferred by the likes of the DA.

There are many forms of liberalism. Common to them all is the belief that liberal values are the hem of human achievement, of the universal process of civil improvement, and the only condition that leads to proper human rights. Liberals measure human rights by increased civil amenities that ameliorate the harsher aspects of life, like diminution of ignorance and the flowering of arts and sciences, etc, etc. Bless their souls. Why they think all of this is an exclusive achievement of liberal politics is a misintepretation of history by most liberal scholars, and a topic for another time.

Why then is most of us, especially black South Africans, not liberals seeing that liberal values are so noble? First of all, there's a yawning gap between the values liberals profess and what they practise. There is, for instance, nothing civil about muckraking inflationary parasailing politics of madame Zille. Secondly history is against white political parties in South Africa. So long as the DA remains predominantly white it'll be a suspect to most black people. In a way, the DA is in a conundrum. It is more of a cultural than racial thing. I strongly doubt if politics can change culture, it has to be the other way round. All societies thrive through their mainstream culture, which happens to be African in South Africa for anyone who cares to know. It is often said that the DA's hope in SA are in the present bombardment of mass consumerist culture, the so called bourgeois emerging black middle class. That the DA's major score scard is in polite tensions of middle class concerns, with occassional moral clucking about the bottom end citizens, I suppose. Why they are not cashing maximum returns from it then must be the measure of their lack of vision and their claps under the chains of conundrum.

This is how the conundrum goes further: The DA's chance is in unapologetically embracing bourgeois pieties and cultural pretenses of consumerism. This means it must, by necessity, leave behind the poor South African majority for the devil to take. And that opens it to accusations of being elitist and blimpish (which by the way there are in a subtle way for now). But if the ANC can be bolshie why can't the DA be blimpish? O, I remeber, they'll lose the poor majority they mean to attract. That's the DA's Catch-22 situation.

Another course to take for the DA would be to openly blame the coarse and crowd-pleasing Philistinism, with all its bracing rebellion against upper-class pretension, as based more on envy masquerading as dressed up concern for the poor. Yark! Stupid me. They are already saying that in hushed tones. Why not open up the debate then; let Sonne bringt es an den Tag (the sun reveals all) by calling a spade a spade. Let the DA take a new slogan like; The Consumer Revolution, or something catchy like that, instead of lame and pretentious “Open, Opportunity Society”; as if there is anything open and opportunistic in unskilled people sitting against the wall in township shacks wondering where their next meal is going to come from. Perhaps that way the DA may pull the coup of convincing the South African majority that neo-liberalism, despite the glaring failures of American capitalism, is compatible with humaneness and bias to upliftment of the poor.

The major folly of DA politics is characterised by Mr. Leon's statement like: “I'm not sacared of being on the right side of an argument with the wrong people.” Wrong people here meaning the trade unions. I do not see how a proper leader would be so foolish as to congratulate himself on his own insularity. Typical of DA drawing room flatulence. Mr. Leon refuses material support of great numbers who happen to share similar views with him on the country's pressing issues like Aids, Zimbabwe, Crime and so forth, just because they are a wrong crowd? What did he have in common with the NNP, except virulent hatred for the ANC and subtle racism? Blimpish! The DA's arrogant obtuseness is what is making most black folks to shy away from their coffers.
Another, as I've already indicated, is the DA obsession with opposing ANC politics. Nothing wrong with having different opinion to your opposition, but the DA's blatant bias to the ANC is cloying. Most black people who, like myself, are not members of the ANC are not bias against it; they just have different opinions, and maintain openness to new ideas and different point of views. The DA has a pathological structural fault that makes it unattractive to black voters, especially the denial of its own flaws while being extremely well attuned to the failures of others. This rubs most black people the wrong way.

South African politics were founded on colour and race. Colour is not a human or personal reality but a political one. DA refuses to acknowledge racism as endemic in the political attitudes and structures of South African society as the result fails to clear its own rubbish of subtle racial prejudice and superiority. As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Blacks might have their collective servile pride but they are not stupid. They see that the freedom the DA calls for is that of a fox in the chicken coop.