As a general rule, I am loath to give any attention to the leader of a political party that could not muster even half a percent of support in the 2024 general election.
The people have already spoken on Rise Mzansi. They have decided not to take it seriously, despite the enormous war chest of naïve donor funding at its disposal to convince people otherwise.
Songezo Zibi’s recent article, On Johannesburg, Helen Zille, Jim Collins and South Africa’s terminal decline, is a superb indication of why its failure was so spectacular.
It dances around, shamelessly, between black nationalist identity politics with its destructive race-based policy dogma, then back to non-racialism, democratic leadership and a market economy. Honestly. It makes Carl Niehaus seem coherent.
And that is the problem parties like Zibi’s face. If you are going to repeat ANC policies, you needn’t exist. If you are going to repeat DA policies, you needn’t exist. People will just vote for the larger brand that is more capable of delivering on that same ideology. If you think you can insert yourself into the space between the ANC and DA, you will find yourself like Zibi did in this article – dancing around between one and the other and making absolutely no sense at all.
But, I will always defend Zibi’s right to confuse the electorate in any way he wishes. Free speech is one of the many liberal values I have fought for during all the years of my life, which Zibi so kindly quantifies.
‘Alt-right’ misnomer
What I do take issue with, in the strongest possible terms, is his loose labelling of my political philosophy as “alt-right”.
That is categorically false. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. I have, admittedly, had a long career in political activism and public service, as Zibi says. The Overton Window has shifted frequently during that period, here and abroad. But I have remained the same: a fierce, uncompromising liberal, willing to defend my position against liberal backsliding from whichever side the attack came.
Of course, Zibi offers nothing to defend his throwaway label. So let me help him. What does it mean to be “alt-right”? And, in comparison, what does it mean to be a liberal?
The first core feature of the “alt-right”, or as I call it, the “woke-right”, is identity politics: the belief that one race is better than another and should therefore have enhanced protections.
Like any true liberal, my political philosophy is unapologetically non-racial. Non-racialism is forward looking, not backward looking. Of course, non-racialism does not mean denying our shameful past. Non-racialism acknowledges the role that race and all other ethnic-based discrimination played in shaping the South Africa we inherited.
Non-racialism is a forward-looking solution. It acknowledges the damage that racial nationalism has caused, and still causes. It says: ‘no more of that’. We cannot solve the problems that racism caused by more racism. We cannot bring peace and prosperity in diverse societies by pigeon-holing and dividing each other based on the colour of our skin. Rather, we see value in what lies inside each person, and we build a national identity based on unity, joint purpose and common values.
Now I understand that race-based politics has become so entrenched in the South African literati that those who refuse to conform are viewed as the racist ones. And that is a cross that I am willing to carry, in order to stubbornly insist on the simple belief that all men, and all women, should be treated equally.
Long fight against racial division
I have always opposed those who want to divide our societies along racial lines. I believe it is a recipe for war. During apartheid, I fought the National Party regime for that reason. I continued that fight in the democratic years – fighting tooth and nail to prevent those same National Party sympathisers from taking over the DA in the 2000s, and threatening to lead my own breakaway liberal party if they managed to do so.
When the virus of Wokeism unleashed itself over the last decade, my past experience of nationalists helped me recognise it for exactly what it is: racial nationalism. Us and them. Righteous and not righteous. Good and Bad – all adjudicated by race and gender. I fought against this modern variant of liberal backsliding with the same force which I had opposed it before. I know full well that this sort of thinking takes societies backwards, not forwards.
Songezo, on the other hand, refers to “black” people a grand total of 18 times in his politically bipolar article. “Black professional class”, “clever blacks”, “black leadership”, “black role-modelling”, “black solidarity”, “black parties”, on and on the list goes.
Alt-right and woke left — political cousins
This is the sort of obsession with identity politics with which you would associate the “alt-right” and the “woke left”, as hard as it may sometimes be to discern any difference between the two. They are actually two sides of the same coin.
Another core feature of those two political cousins is their denial of the utility of the state, their desire to overthrow, and break democratic institutions.
If the alt-right succeeds in this regard, it will be people like me who they overthrow. And, judging by Zibi’s “analysis”, it will be people like him who do the overthrowing. I believe in the state, although a much more limited version of it, that focuses on doing the things it is supposed to do: providing quality basic services, upholding the rule of law and protecting people from harm.
You don’t see me joining the nationalist successionists and/or those promoting violent uprisings, like the EFF, or denying the constitutional state like MKP (and all of those deluded souls who consider such movements as “progressive”).
What you will hear me saying is this: if you don’t like it, use the power of your vote to fix it, not the power of your sword. If you do the latter, then you will be met with the full force of the Rule of Law. That is the liberal position. That is Constitutional Democracy.
And you don’t see me going around spreading Christian nationalism, or the conspiracy theories of the alt-right. You will see me sticking true to the liberal value of religious freedom and evidence-based policymaking.
Better approach
That is something that I would entirely recommend. So, when you see an economy in regression, setting world records in unemployment, you can say openly, “This isn’t working. We need a better approach.” Let’s be guided by scientific evidence of how to increase economic activity and get more people into jobs, rather than to double down on the same policies that have failed everywhere they have been tried.
Duh. It really isn’t so complicated. Non-racialism. Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law. Democracy. A market economy, attractive to investors, that can generate the revenue needed to fund quality social services to those who can’t afford to pay themselves. An excellent system of basic education to give people a fighting chance. The state’s investment is to provide equality of opportunities, not to manufacture equality of outcomes.
Many years ago, similar hit-pieces would be thrown at me, labelling me a “progressive”, as if that was meant to offend.
How is it so, that modern “progressives” have become so wrapped up in race-based identity politics that they remind me of those who opposed progress before? Their words so rhyme with the tyrants of the past who fooled the ignorant with their sly linguistic craftsmanship, hypnotising people into believing that their policy of preferring one race over another was somehow justifiable.
Surely, the endgame for progressivism is non-racialism: a society where we can be free from our past and our race identities. Otherwise, what is it that you are fighting for?
The people want someone who can do the job
I pine for the day when one is not labelled racist for the belief that the best course for South Africa is genuine non-racialism, unity, and getting behind the vision of the “Rainbow Nation” – however corny that phrase may sound in the modern day. It blows my mind that this innately peaceful principle is so controversial.
You would think, given that your richly financed campaign delivered just 0.4% of the vote, you’d take some time to introspect, rather than throwing slurs at people from other parties who won the hearts and minds of more than 50 voters to each one of yours.
But one aspect where I do agree with Songezo is that Johannesburg has been so run into the ground, that its residents couldn’t care less about ideological semantics.
They just want someone who can do the job, will do the job, and do it properly.
They want winners. Not losers. DM