The swing away from liberalism, and back

OVER the past decade, I have come to realise uncomfortably, the DA and right-wing conservative Afrikaner pressure groups (Solidarity, AfriForum and Saai) have developed a common master narrative that is extremely damaging to South Africa’s liberal-democratic project.

The ideological fusion between these two historical “white identities” has led to the erroneous perception among black South Africans that Helen Zille and Kallie Kriel are cut from the same political cloth, and that they harbour the same prejudices towards black South Africans.

I was aware of this distorted perception, but my concern was elsewhere, more academic. Liberalism is often suspected from a leftist perspective of perpetuating – rather than erasing – class, racial and historical differences, and the relationship between white and black in South Africa is often seen as a manifestation of this immoral anomaly.

As if this were not already a weighty critique of liberalism, there was a clear tendency within the DA to respond to anxious white conservative calls for the protection of historical privilege.

There can be no doubt that property rights and wealth in South Africa must be protected at all costs. Still, there was no sign that white South Africans were being politically and ideologically targeted for the alienation of assets and wealth.

The DA’s betrayal of liberalism and the accompanying shift to the right was inexcusable and was a response to the rise of conservative electoral politics and the untenability of the ANC’s left-populist rhetoric.

The Barkhuizen effect

The most pertinent conflation between liberalism and right-wing philosophy that sticks in my memory – as a specific turning point – was the incident at Schweizer-Reneke Primary School on January 9, 2019 when teacher Elana Barkhuizen was falsely accused of racism in her classroom.

The national election, in May 2019, was imminent and the DA was tense about its positioning with white voters. Luyolo Mphithi, the federal leader of the DA youth, shared a photo of a Grade R classroom at the school on Twitter and all hell broke loose. The photo, which was initially circulated on WhatsApp, showed black and white Grade R learners sitting separately in a classroom. Barkhuizen was almost immediately suspended from her position.

However, the labour court declared her suspension unlawful and an investigation by the South African Human Rights Commission found that the school had not committed unfair discrimination, but that the seating arrangement resulted from unconscious racial profiling and the absence of a clear integration policy.

AfriForum and the DA both stepped in for Barkhuizen, which was the right thing to do. But in the following years, the DA’s so-called anti-woke rhetoric also coincided with the “race madness” narrative of Dirk Hermann and the Solidarity group. The youthful but very talented Mphithi, the young DA leader who did the right thing with the wrong facts, eventually became a DA member of parliament, but was responsible for a massive ideological crisis within the DA.

The normalisation of right-wing discourse

This confusing overlap of ideologies over the past decade offered AfriForum and Solidarity the opportunity to package their right-wing activities as normal, or pragmatic politics. Several members of both organisations parade in the Afrikaans media as independent political commentators. Of course, they already are the primary voices on Solidarity outlets Radio Pretoria and Maroela Media, but RSG, Rapport and Netwerk24 are teaming them up with independent commentators, and in the process, the right-wing (or Afrikaner ethnic) presence in the national discourse is being “normalised”.

Jaco Kleynhans is head of international liaison at the Solidarity Movement. His heartland is Orania. Kleynhans is involved with Ernst Roets in the Afrikaner Foundation, an initiative of the Solidarity Movement that aims to garner international support and recognition for Afrikaners’ quest for “freedom”. Roets left Solidarity last week, but he was the executive director of the foundation.

In the more recent past, this movement’s focus was on Donald Trump. Trump represents the rise of the new right in North America, like the right-wing populist, nationalist political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) does in Germany. In France, the same narrow-minded or perhaps even neo-Nazi ideology is represented by the Rassemblement National (RN), formerly known as the Front National.

Together with Trump, these parties represent a fire-breathing flood of right-wing ideology in historically liberal democratic countries.

But here in South Africa, liberalism too – and certainly the DA – has sporadically flirted with the nomenclature of right-wing political philosophy. In the 2019 national election, there was a measurable uptick in support for the Freedom Front. With 2,38% (414,864 votes) of national support, Pieter Groenewald’s party had a significant 10 seats (four in 2014) in the national assembly. There was exponential growth in Gauteng and the Western Cape in particular.

The general opinion was that the Freedom Front had poached about 200 000 votes from the DA and that the Barkhuizen incident was the political spark that set the chain reaction in motion. The DA wanted to win back this conservative support and had to start by targeting ANC policies such as expropriation, affirmative action and black empowerment. The move to the right was in full swing.

Suddenly the distinction between the DA and AfriForum's political theory was not so pronounced. The social democrats within the DA and the traditional liberal support base of the party had become equally uncomfortable.

The media and the right-wingers

However, not just the DA moved to the right. The Solidarity movement actively began to infiltrate the media on the middle ground of white public opinion. By the time Donald Trump began his destructive second term in January 2025 by reaching out to right-wing politics in Europe and South Africa, Solidarity's far-right Kleynhans was an almost daily “voice of reason" in almost all Afrikaans media.

Kleynhans would deliver a perfectly normal political analysis on RSG's Monitor programme and immediately afterwards declare on X that he was going to denounce the “racist ANC" with his connections in the Trump administration, while in the same breath also taking a swipe at what he called “left-wing atheists" in local Afrikaans media. Often those would be “atheists” and academics with whom he had had what seemed like a perfectly normal panel discussion on a national radio station a few hours before.

Solidarity and AfriForum have succeeded in normalising the right-wing perspective in the Afrikaans media as representative of the national discourse while promoting the idea of ​​“exceptional whites”.

The undisguised racists among us

It is difficult and dangerous to make generalisations, but political elites often speak out so much on ideological issues that it is possible to categorise them. For example, in the politics of Israel, political decision-makers are often referred to as “doves” or “hawks”. It is about the generalisable disposition, or rather instinctive attitude, of certain important political decision-makers.

I do not know whether AfriForum's Kriel is a racist, I do suspect most members of his organisation are. On the other hand, I am very sure Helen Zille is not, and I suspect that John Steenhuisen, Dean Macpherson and Leon Schreiber will have a very hard time being dismissed as racists.

Zille's political reactions are often conservative, as the philosophy of liberalism is frequently understood, but the difference between the right, and in some cases far right (Kriel, Dirk Hermann, Willem Petzer and Roets) and conservatives (Groenewald and Corné Mulder) is vast. There was a time when the Freedom Front also flirted with right-wing politics, but since Groenewald has taken over the leadership, his party has concluded political agreements with the liberal DA at various levels of government and stayed clear of right-wing political statements.

GNU and the return to liberalism

However, now that the DA and the Freedom Front form part of the government of national unity (GNU) along with eight other parties, it is becoming clear that the infiltration of right-wing politics into the theoretical domain of liberalism is not sustainable.

It seems that Steenhuisen and his DA colleagues in the cabinet realise that for the GNU to survive, they will have to make a clear distinction between the DA and Afrikaner nationalism. Perhaps there is more than just an awareness, or a sense, with Steenhuisen and Zille of the sectarian interests of Afrikaner nationalism, but it is more likely they are also becoming increasingly aware of the need for pragmatism in promoting the interests of all South Africans.

Perhaps the clearest moment of ideological separation between the liberal DA and the right-wing Solidarity movement was a public spat this week between the DA leader and minister of agriculture, Steenhuisen, and Sakeliga’s Piet le Roux. Sakeliga has a historical connection with AfriForum and Solidarity but now functions as an independent representative of the business sector. Le Roux’s philosophy is a copy of that of AfriForum and Solidarity.

The conflict stems from false allegations by Le Roux that Steenhuisen had introduced AgriBEE in the agricultural sector. In response Steenhuisen commented that “South Africa's inequalities will not go away on their own”.

This comment came as tension between South Africa and America over empowerment and expropriation ratcheted up. It did not mean that Steenhuisen agreed with the ANC over these policies and legislation, but confirmed that the DA – through its leader – recognised the need for a feasible and economically workable empowerment policy.

To finally confirm the point, the DA on Wednesday refused to accept finance minister Enoch Godongwana's two percentage point increase in the VAT rate. This led to the minister having to postpone his budget speech until March to allow time for a compromise within the GNU.

Steenhuisen made the valid point on the steps of parliament that the ANC, for ideological reasons, refuses to formulate policies that can make economic growth a source of income and now wants to harass the poorest of the poor with increased taxes to accommodate the excessive increases granted to the trough feeders employed by the state last year at the insistence of militant unions.

Finally! Well said, Fred!

The ideological difference between Solidarity's sycophantic pro-Trump ideology and the DA's liberal GNU values ​​could not be greater.

Use the liberals

Pres. Cyril Ramaphosa will soon announce the names of South Africa's delegation to Europe, China and America. The hope is that this team can build momentum in Europe and arrive in America with an authority of reasonableness that will make Trump think again about our unique realities.

Although I doubt that anything can turn Trump around, especially now that he is also in conflict with America's most loyal allies in Europe, I still think we need to put together a strong team for this suicide mission.

The DA ministers must go too. Welcome back to the “liberals".

TweedleTrump and TweedleJZee

America is experiencing state capture like that which plagued South Africa during the nine wasted years of Jacob Zuma between 2009 and 2018. Gareth van Onselen recently posted some typical political traits on X with the question, “Who of Jacob Zuma and/or Donald Trump can be linked to the following?”

• He believes he was appointed by God.
• He is driven by political revenge.
• He appoints his family members into the patronage networks of the state.
• He puts his own political will above that of the constitution.
• He involves well-meaning, dominant economic players in the value and supply chains of the state.
• He accuses judges of political bias towards him.
• His poor financial management leads to periodic bankruptcy.
• He is dependent on populism and demagogy.
• He shows a lack of principled judgement due to his insistence on self-interest.
• He is associated with the gender stigmatisation of women.
• Evades tax and attempts to cover it up against public scrutiny.
• Encourages large groups of people to use violence for political purposes.
• Has a macho affinity for Russia and Vladimir Putin.
• Believes the media is biased.
• Uses personal and/or state power to stifle political oversight and financial investigations.
• Has experienced an assassination attempt.
• Delivers long-winded, meaningless speeches.
• Lies without blinking or blushing.
• Threatens to fire or imprison confidants who turn against him.

It is amazing how often the behaviour of Donald Trump and Jacob Zuma overlap.

♦ VWB ♦

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