Race, Power, and the Politics of Distraction
As economic crises deepen, right-wing fearmongering and racial scapegoating thrive—masking the real struggle for economic justice.
By Andile Zulu
For decades the majority of white South Africans were indoctrinated to believe in their immutable difference and inherent superiority. Whether preached in the pulpit, disseminated through state-controlled media, or infused into school curriculums, the ideology of race was as pervasive as it was potent.
But beyond state indoctrination, the ideology of race reflected the material conditions, political configuration, and social relations of apartheid. In the daily experience of apartheid, white South Africans were most likely to only encounter and interact with black people as instruments to sustain their material comforts or domestic luxuries. In every sphere of daily life, white South Africans bore witness to the dehumanization of black people, framed as normal and necessary. Most of what was understood about the experience of being black under apartheid was conveyed and digested through racist viewpoints provided by family, friends, teachers, employers, or the state.
Precisely because South Africa’s government has done little to unravel the exploitative property relations and processes of capital accumulation that trap most black people into either poverty, unemployment, or labor precarity, the ideological outlook of white citizens faces little challenge. Accentuating this malaise is the notion that the eradication of poverty, unemployment, and inequality is a zero-sum game. This illusion has some of its roots in the doctrine of Swart Gevaar (Afrikaans for “black danger”). It was a propaganda term with a long history, designed and deployed by Afrikaner nationalists as an election strategy to convince white South Africans that the political inclusion of black people into decision-making would spell the end of white civilization.
Intoxicated by the ideology of race and some unable to cope with no longer existing in an elevated social, political, and economic status, many white South Africans, both reactionary and liberal, struggle to accept that building a country that is safe, socially cohesive and prosperous for all who live in it, will require a profound change to the structure of the economy. This process will partly entail the loss of their economic advantages but also the privileges and status of the growing black elite.
In an interview recorded by the BBC before his detention, anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko spoke of what he envisioned South Africa beyond white supremacist rule would look like, proposing that “In our country there shall be no minority, there shall be no majority, there shall just be people…it will be a completely non-racial egalitarian society.” This is not the liberal moralist non-racialism that seeks to evade the issue of discrimination by pointing to race as a social construction, but a non-racialism founded in recognizing the intimate, functional relationship between racism, the ideology of race, and economic exploitation.
Elaborating on whether the future of South Africa is socialist, Biko prophetically remarked:
In South Africa there is such an ill-distribution of wealth that any form of political freedom which does not touch on the proper distribution of wealth will be meaningless…if we have a mere change of face in those in governing positions, what is likely to happen is that black people will continue to be poor and you will get a few blacks filtering into the so-called bourgeoisie, and our society will be run almost as of yesterday.
Making South Africa a prosperous, peaceful, and safe country for all those within it is not about seeking retribution against white people. Capitalists, black or white, will relentlessly pursue profits and accumulation at the expense of people, regardless of their racial classification.
To free ourselves from the archaic and divisive ideology of race, and to combat racism, the underlying material conditions which breathe life into these mystifications must be transformed. Practically speaking, a program must be built, backed by a mass of millions, to challenge the power of capital and the political elites who orchestrate its domination. If South Africa remains entangled in a neoliberal project, then what awaits us are the dangerous delusions and destructive fantasies of reactionaries that are swarming the world.
Andile Zulu is a political writer residing in Durban.
As economic crises deepen, right-wing fearmongering and racial scapegoating thrive—masking the real struggle for economic justice.
By Andile Zulu
February 14, 2025
Source: Africa Is a Country
A farm in South Africa. Photo by Hannes Richter on Unsplash.
In the absence of effective solutions to South Africa’s escalating economic and social crises, dangerous delusions and destructive fantasies are flourishing. Having returned to executive power, US President Donald Trump recently provided renewed vitality to the paranoia of right-wing populists while validating the perverse anxieties of white nationalists. On February 3, Trump threatened to freeze funding to South Africa, claiming that its government is “confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY.”
Sadly but unsurprisingly, Trump was, of course, referring to white South Africans, specifically the white Afrikaans community. The tweet was soon followed by the signing and issuing of an executive order by the White House on February 7. Now the US government aims to “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”
President Trump’s assertions and executive order came after the (needlessly) controversial reaction to the adoption by the South African government of the Expropriation Act. Far from a radical reformation of land policy or a threat to the livelihoods of white property owners, the Act is a procedural piece of legislation that lays out the context and criteria through which the government may take private property, either in the public interest or for public purpose. Considering the factors outlined for calculating “just and equitable compensation,” legal commentators have argued that “whilst it may be possible to arrive at nil compensation, it would only be in extremely rare circumstances that would enable nil compensation.”
But the mundane reality of the amendments to the Expropriation Act is irrelevant to political opportunists. Trump’s statement reverberated as a rallying cry, summoning right-wing pundits, alt-right influencers, and white nationalist organizations to echo myths of systematic white persecution by a black majority government. Predictably, the debunked conspiracy of white genocide has been given new life, once again tainting mainstream discourse. In response to a statement by South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, which aimed to clarify the function of the Expropriation Act, tech-billionaire and Iron Man wannabe Elon Musk tweeted, “Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?”
Donald Trump’s executive order, Elon Musk’s championing of white nationalism, the jubilee of the global right win,g and the hysterical domestic debates unfolding in South Africa around land reform all point to the potent power and insidious function of race as an ideological construction under capitalism.
In South Africa and around the world, neoliberal capitalism is in a state of calamity and crisis. Like their counterparts in the US Democratic Party, the African National Congress lacks the political will, ideological orientation, and material interest to depart from a neoliberal framework. It is in this vacuum that racial and ethnic chauvinism, often combined with nationalist populism, can thrive.
The Afrikaner nationalism of organizations such as AfriForum and the right-wing populism of Trump or Musk work in cohesion to cloak the unsustainable and exploitative property relations that have made all of our lives worse. In order to retain the fruits of colonial plunder, defend the tyranny of private property, protect the power of our capitalist overlords, and undermine the possibility of reform or revolt, the white right-wing must invent myths that fuel fear, nourish resentment, deepen divisions, and incite conflict.
Bewildering as it may seem to those living in South Africa, the narrative that claims white people are helpless victims of oppressive racial discrimination by a black government craving revenge is not entirely marginal. In high school, university, and as an adult, I have occasionally encountered white people who sincerely suspect they are being primed for or will eventually be victims of violent, state-sanctioned discrimination.
One need not waste too much time debunking the myth of white persecution in post-apartheid South Africa. The empirical evidence is abundant and clear. Relative to the vast majority of the black population, most white citizens have better educational opportunities and outcomes, are more likely to find employment and earn higher wages, are less likely to endure poverty or food insecurity, and generally live in neighborhoods that enjoy better service delivery and safety from crime. This does not mean that the lives of white citizens are untouched by suffering and struggle; whether it be the rising cost of living, financial precarity, dysfunctional local governments, or violent crime. But these obstacles are not thrown upon white South Africans specifically because they are classified as white; they are symptoms of an increasingly incapacitated state run by kleptocrats who manage a debilitating capitalist economy.
So if most of the white population experiences a significantly higher standard of socioeconomic well-being (relative to the black majority, including Coloureds and Indians), why are some minds and hearts so firmly gripped by the myth of their persecution? Here, we can gain insight from French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, who defined ideology as “representing the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” With this definition of ideology, one is then compelled to ask, “What are the imaginary relationships, and what are the real conditions of existence?”
Strange as it may seem, in a time where the idea of race appears as real and all-enveloping as the air we breathe, we must remember that white South Africans were not always white. They were once Dutch sailors, German merchants, Swedish priests, unskilled French laborers, and British soldiers. But in the destructive process of primitive accumulation (dispossession of land and livestock or the coercive herding of Africans into exploitative wage or slave labor), both by the imperial powers of Europe and the titans of mercantile capitalism (e.g., the Dutch East India Company), European settlers would have to become white to justify the dispossession, hyper-exploitation, and political domination of the native African population.
Racism, as the action of discrimination based on perceived social difference, preceded the ideological construction of race in South Africa. Race then arises and mutates as an ideology functioning to legitimate and rationalize the emerging property relations of capitalism. As historian Barbara Fields reminds us, and one sees this reflected in the Afrikaner nationalism of the apartheid regime, the ideology of race functions to explain away and resolve the contradiction between the liberty of some and the subjugation of others. If Africans are indeed mentally inferior, morally immature, and culturally backward, then their economic exploitation and exclusion from political decision-making is not only justified but necessary.
Systemic racism, and discrimination enacted through policy and legislation, preceded the apartheid regime by many decades. An infamous example would be the 1913 Natives Land Act, which severely restricted black land ownership, reserving 93% of land for the white minority of the population. Reeling from the debilitating shockwaves of industrialization, urbanization, world war, and global economic crisis, a class alliance was gradually formed in the 1930s as an attempt to “save the volk” by forging a monopoly capitalism that would uplift the Afrikaner into a new age of prosperity. Apartheid, and the Afrikaner nationalism, which was the engine of its moral and political justification, was an answer to the evolving character of capitalism in South Africa and abroad.
Shackling millions of Africans into brutal exploitation and political marginality proved to be unsustainable. Economic developments and political forces, domestic and international, collided to bring about the end of state-enforced racial segregation and political oppression. Yet, in the crucible of apartheid’s death, South Africa’s own version of neoliberalism was forged, and capitalism endured.
As noted by author Dan O’Meara in his book Volkskapitalisme:
If ideologies arise out of everyday experience and mirror and guide such experience in both a partially adequate yet misrepresented way, they do not adequately represent the conditions of existence of such everyday experience. Here is the source of the illusory character of ideology.
Race, and the right-wing populism that cultivates the myth of white persecution, draw vitality from a shallow or at times totally absent perception and understanding of the underlying conditions that constitute everyday experience in post-apartheid South Africa, in both our past and present.
An important factor in determining a person’s chances of enjoying socio-economic well-being under capitalism is the resources they inherit, such as property, wealth, and networks. A salient feature of South Africa’s democratic government has been its unwavering commitment to the class project of neoliberalism. British-American academic David Harvey defined this project as aiming to “restore the conditions of capital accumulation and re-establish the power of economic elites.” For the post-apartheid government, neoliberalism is enforced through maintaining austerity measures, financial deregulation, trade liberalization, regressive taxation, commercialization of public services, export-led growth, and most recently, the creeping privatization of public utilities.
In the wake of neoliberalism’s crusade, the economic advantages most white South Africans had accrued over decades were compounded by a government that avoided wealth redistribution, land or urban housing reform, extensive welfare, progressive taxation of the rich, or public investment in industrial economic development. Terrorized by a neoliberal state and sacrificed to the ravenous process of capital accumulation, the black working class (and even the emergent, precarious black middle class) has been deeply betrayed. And their righteous indignation has become increasingly difficult to contain or pacify.
Calls for radical land reform, nationalization or wealth redistribution, and the embrace of populist parties who indulge in irresponsible racist and chauvinist rhetoric, express not only a deep dissatisfaction with the post-apartheid order but a yearning for an alternative to destitution and powerlessness. Criticisms of “whiteness” or whiteed (by state and economy) as second-class citizens.
Organizations such as AfriForum, the Institute for Race Relations, and political parties such as the Democratic Alliance or Freedom Front Plus, indulge in political mess privilege (as politically and analytically messy as they sometimes can be) are a testament to the widespread sense that the majority of black people are still treataging that frames the despair of black people or their demands for transformative change, as either an attack on white livelihoods or an assortment of destabilizing, utopian demands that will scare off private investment and upset the free market. Or there is a complete refusal to acknowledge the imprint of history in the present and the structures blocking the possibility of economic transformation. These white lobbying groups and political parties fail to see that there can be no bootstraps to pull up if one has no shoes. And it is no coincidence that they advance economically conservative policies.
A farm in South Africa. Photo by Hannes Richter on Unsplash.
In the absence of effective solutions to South Africa’s escalating economic and social crises, dangerous delusions and destructive fantasies are flourishing. Having returned to executive power, US President Donald Trump recently provided renewed vitality to the paranoia of right-wing populists while validating the perverse anxieties of white nationalists. On February 3, Trump threatened to freeze funding to South Africa, claiming that its government is “confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY.”
Sadly but unsurprisingly, Trump was, of course, referring to white South Africans, specifically the white Afrikaans community. The tweet was soon followed by the signing and issuing of an executive order by the White House on February 7. Now the US government aims to “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”
President Trump’s assertions and executive order came after the (needlessly) controversial reaction to the adoption by the South African government of the Expropriation Act. Far from a radical reformation of land policy or a threat to the livelihoods of white property owners, the Act is a procedural piece of legislation that lays out the context and criteria through which the government may take private property, either in the public interest or for public purpose. Considering the factors outlined for calculating “just and equitable compensation,” legal commentators have argued that “whilst it may be possible to arrive at nil compensation, it would only be in extremely rare circumstances that would enable nil compensation.”
But the mundane reality of the amendments to the Expropriation Act is irrelevant to political opportunists. Trump’s statement reverberated as a rallying cry, summoning right-wing pundits, alt-right influencers, and white nationalist organizations to echo myths of systematic white persecution by a black majority government. Predictably, the debunked conspiracy of white genocide has been given new life, once again tainting mainstream discourse. In response to a statement by South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, which aimed to clarify the function of the Expropriation Act, tech-billionaire and Iron Man wannabe Elon Musk tweeted, “Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?”
Donald Trump’s executive order, Elon Musk’s championing of white nationalism, the jubilee of the global right win,g and the hysterical domestic debates unfolding in South Africa around land reform all point to the potent power and insidious function of race as an ideological construction under capitalism.
In South Africa and around the world, neoliberal capitalism is in a state of calamity and crisis. Like their counterparts in the US Democratic Party, the African National Congress lacks the political will, ideological orientation, and material interest to depart from a neoliberal framework. It is in this vacuum that racial and ethnic chauvinism, often combined with nationalist populism, can thrive.
The Afrikaner nationalism of organizations such as AfriForum and the right-wing populism of Trump or Musk work in cohesion to cloak the unsustainable and exploitative property relations that have made all of our lives worse. In order to retain the fruits of colonial plunder, defend the tyranny of private property, protect the power of our capitalist overlords, and undermine the possibility of reform or revolt, the white right-wing must invent myths that fuel fear, nourish resentment, deepen divisions, and incite conflict.
Bewildering as it may seem to those living in South Africa, the narrative that claims white people are helpless victims of oppressive racial discrimination by a black government craving revenge is not entirely marginal. In high school, university, and as an adult, I have occasionally encountered white people who sincerely suspect they are being primed for or will eventually be victims of violent, state-sanctioned discrimination.
One need not waste too much time debunking the myth of white persecution in post-apartheid South Africa. The empirical evidence is abundant and clear. Relative to the vast majority of the black population, most white citizens have better educational opportunities and outcomes, are more likely to find employment and earn higher wages, are less likely to endure poverty or food insecurity, and generally live in neighborhoods that enjoy better service delivery and safety from crime. This does not mean that the lives of white citizens are untouched by suffering and struggle; whether it be the rising cost of living, financial precarity, dysfunctional local governments, or violent crime. But these obstacles are not thrown upon white South Africans specifically because they are classified as white; they are symptoms of an increasingly incapacitated state run by kleptocrats who manage a debilitating capitalist economy.
So if most of the white population experiences a significantly higher standard of socioeconomic well-being (relative to the black majority, including Coloureds and Indians), why are some minds and hearts so firmly gripped by the myth of their persecution? Here, we can gain insight from French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, who defined ideology as “representing the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” With this definition of ideology, one is then compelled to ask, “What are the imaginary relationships, and what are the real conditions of existence?”
Strange as it may seem, in a time where the idea of race appears as real and all-enveloping as the air we breathe, we must remember that white South Africans were not always white. They were once Dutch sailors, German merchants, Swedish priests, unskilled French laborers, and British soldiers. But in the destructive process of primitive accumulation (dispossession of land and livestock or the coercive herding of Africans into exploitative wage or slave labor), both by the imperial powers of Europe and the titans of mercantile capitalism (e.g., the Dutch East India Company), European settlers would have to become white to justify the dispossession, hyper-exploitation, and political domination of the native African population.
Racism, as the action of discrimination based on perceived social difference, preceded the ideological construction of race in South Africa. Race then arises and mutates as an ideology functioning to legitimate and rationalize the emerging property relations of capitalism. As historian Barbara Fields reminds us, and one sees this reflected in the Afrikaner nationalism of the apartheid regime, the ideology of race functions to explain away and resolve the contradiction between the liberty of some and the subjugation of others. If Africans are indeed mentally inferior, morally immature, and culturally backward, then their economic exploitation and exclusion from political decision-making is not only justified but necessary.
Systemic racism, and discrimination enacted through policy and legislation, preceded the apartheid regime by many decades. An infamous example would be the 1913 Natives Land Act, which severely restricted black land ownership, reserving 93% of land for the white minority of the population. Reeling from the debilitating shockwaves of industrialization, urbanization, world war, and global economic crisis, a class alliance was gradually formed in the 1930s as an attempt to “save the volk” by forging a monopoly capitalism that would uplift the Afrikaner into a new age of prosperity. Apartheid, and the Afrikaner nationalism, which was the engine of its moral and political justification, was an answer to the evolving character of capitalism in South Africa and abroad.
Shackling millions of Africans into brutal exploitation and political marginality proved to be unsustainable. Economic developments and political forces, domestic and international, collided to bring about the end of state-enforced racial segregation and political oppression. Yet, in the crucible of apartheid’s death, South Africa’s own version of neoliberalism was forged, and capitalism endured.
As noted by author Dan O’Meara in his book Volkskapitalisme:
If ideologies arise out of everyday experience and mirror and guide such experience in both a partially adequate yet misrepresented way, they do not adequately represent the conditions of existence of such everyday experience. Here is the source of the illusory character of ideology.
Race, and the right-wing populism that cultivates the myth of white persecution, draw vitality from a shallow or at times totally absent perception and understanding of the underlying conditions that constitute everyday experience in post-apartheid South Africa, in both our past and present.
An important factor in determining a person’s chances of enjoying socio-economic well-being under capitalism is the resources they inherit, such as property, wealth, and networks. A salient feature of South Africa’s democratic government has been its unwavering commitment to the class project of neoliberalism. British-American academic David Harvey defined this project as aiming to “restore the conditions of capital accumulation and re-establish the power of economic elites.” For the post-apartheid government, neoliberalism is enforced through maintaining austerity measures, financial deregulation, trade liberalization, regressive taxation, commercialization of public services, export-led growth, and most recently, the creeping privatization of public utilities.
In the wake of neoliberalism’s crusade, the economic advantages most white South Africans had accrued over decades were compounded by a government that avoided wealth redistribution, land or urban housing reform, extensive welfare, progressive taxation of the rich, or public investment in industrial economic development. Terrorized by a neoliberal state and sacrificed to the ravenous process of capital accumulation, the black working class (and even the emergent, precarious black middle class) has been deeply betrayed. And their righteous indignation has become increasingly difficult to contain or pacify.
Calls for radical land reform, nationalization or wealth redistribution, and the embrace of populist parties who indulge in irresponsible racist and chauvinist rhetoric, express not only a deep dissatisfaction with the post-apartheid order but a yearning for an alternative to destitution and powerlessness. Criticisms of “whiteness” or whiteed (by state and economy) as second-class citizens.
Organizations such as AfriForum, the Institute for Race Relations, and political parties such as the Democratic Alliance or Freedom Front Plus, indulge in political mess privilege (as politically and analytically messy as they sometimes can be) are a testament to the widespread sense that the majority of black people are still treataging that frames the despair of black people or their demands for transformative change, as either an attack on white livelihoods or an assortment of destabilizing, utopian demands that will scare off private investment and upset the free market. Or there is a complete refusal to acknowledge the imprint of history in the present and the structures blocking the possibility of economic transformation. These white lobbying groups and political parties fail to see that there can be no bootstraps to pull up if one has no shoes. And it is no coincidence that they advance economically conservative policies.
For decades the majority of white South Africans were indoctrinated to believe in their immutable difference and inherent superiority. Whether preached in the pulpit, disseminated through state-controlled media, or infused into school curriculums, the ideology of race was as pervasive as it was potent.
But beyond state indoctrination, the ideology of race reflected the material conditions, political configuration, and social relations of apartheid. In the daily experience of apartheid, white South Africans were most likely to only encounter and interact with black people as instruments to sustain their material comforts or domestic luxuries. In every sphere of daily life, white South Africans bore witness to the dehumanization of black people, framed as normal and necessary. Most of what was understood about the experience of being black under apartheid was conveyed and digested through racist viewpoints provided by family, friends, teachers, employers, or the state.
Precisely because South Africa’s government has done little to unravel the exploitative property relations and processes of capital accumulation that trap most black people into either poverty, unemployment, or labor precarity, the ideological outlook of white citizens faces little challenge. Accentuating this malaise is the notion that the eradication of poverty, unemployment, and inequality is a zero-sum game. This illusion has some of its roots in the doctrine of Swart Gevaar (Afrikaans for “black danger”). It was a propaganda term with a long history, designed and deployed by Afrikaner nationalists as an election strategy to convince white South Africans that the political inclusion of black people into decision-making would spell the end of white civilization.
Intoxicated by the ideology of race and some unable to cope with no longer existing in an elevated social, political, and economic status, many white South Africans, both reactionary and liberal, struggle to accept that building a country that is safe, socially cohesive and prosperous for all who live in it, will require a profound change to the structure of the economy. This process will partly entail the loss of their economic advantages but also the privileges and status of the growing black elite.
In an interview recorded by the BBC before his detention, anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko spoke of what he envisioned South Africa beyond white supremacist rule would look like, proposing that “In our country there shall be no minority, there shall be no majority, there shall just be people…it will be a completely non-racial egalitarian society.” This is not the liberal moralist non-racialism that seeks to evade the issue of discrimination by pointing to race as a social construction, but a non-racialism founded in recognizing the intimate, functional relationship between racism, the ideology of race, and economic exploitation.
Elaborating on whether the future of South Africa is socialist, Biko prophetically remarked:
In South Africa there is such an ill-distribution of wealth that any form of political freedom which does not touch on the proper distribution of wealth will be meaningless…if we have a mere change of face in those in governing positions, what is likely to happen is that black people will continue to be poor and you will get a few blacks filtering into the so-called bourgeoisie, and our society will be run almost as of yesterday.
Making South Africa a prosperous, peaceful, and safe country for all those within it is not about seeking retribution against white people. Capitalists, black or white, will relentlessly pursue profits and accumulation at the expense of people, regardless of their racial classification.
To free ourselves from the archaic and divisive ideology of race, and to combat racism, the underlying material conditions which breathe life into these mystifications must be transformed. Practically speaking, a program must be built, backed by a mass of millions, to challenge the power of capital and the political elites who orchestrate its domination. If South Africa remains entangled in a neoliberal project, then what awaits us are the dangerous delusions and destructive fantasies of reactionaries that are swarming the world.
Andile Zulu is a political writer residing in Durban.
February 12, 2025
Source: Abahlali baseMjondolo
Abahlali baseMjondolo (The Residents of the Shacks) is a movement of the poor in South Africa.
Our movement condemns the reckless and racist actions of AfriForum in inciting the white right in the United States to act against South Africa. These actions have now resulted in a potentially highly damaging Executive Order against South Africa by Donald Trump.
The rise of the far right across Europe, as well as countries like Argentina, India, Turkey, and the Philippines, is deeply concerning for all people of good conscience. Here in Africa we have Western-backed right-wing governments in countries like Kenya, as well as the dictatorship in Rwanda. The return of Trump as the US president is a major threat to the whole world.
Trump is an extreme racist who uses fascist language about migrants from countries like Mexico and Haiti and now wants to welcome white migrants from South Africa as ‘refugees’. Trump is close to a number of far right-wing white South Africans living in the United States. Two closely related right-wing organisations here in South Africa, AfriForum and Solidarity, have been lobbying the American right for years to try and misrepresent white people as victims in South Africa.
Now we face a very serious situation in which Trump has moved against South Africa. US support for health care services for people living with HIV and AIDS may be withdrawn, South Africa may be expelled from AGOA, and there could even be sanctions. This could be devastating for our health care system and worsen the existing crisis of unemployment. Sanctions would have a disastrous impact on our society.
We condemn the actions of AfriForum and Solidarity in the strongest terms and support the call for a broad front across political lines to isolate these two organisations. These two racist organisations are built on white supremacy and have intentionally misled the American right about the land question in South Africa, and falsely claimed that the general crisis of violence in our country, a crisis that affects the poor most of all, is a political attack on white farmers.
The members of AfriForum did not face the brutality of apartheid and colonialism. They were not robbed of their land. The leaders of AfriForum are not jailed and assassinated when they oppose the ANC. Some of their members are poor, but very few white people live without access to water and sanitation, very few white people live in shacks, and white people have the lowest level of unemployment among all races in South Africa. AfriForum and Solidarity have never expressed concern about the impoverishment and landlessness of most black people. These are organisations that exist to protect white privilege and to keep the status quo.
We welcome the actions by white South Africans of good conscience to clearly oppose the lies told by AfriForum and its attempt to build an alliance with the right in the US. It is important for white people to say that AfriForum does not speak in their name.
We do not agree with the ANC’s policies on land reform and we have no confidence that new legislation will bring about real urban and rural land reform, let alone land reform in the interests of the poor and centred around the political agency of the poor. We have always made it clear that if the government is serious about land reform, they must start by first giving ownership of the land that has already been occupied by the poor in urban and rural areas, by supporting ongoing land reform from below. As we write this statement, the ANC continues to collaborate with militarised private security companies to defend the interests of the rich, and to try and use the courts to evict us from land occupations.
The new legislation is nothing but another piece of paper that will not be implemented. When land reform does happen, it is far more likely to benefit the politicians and other politically connected elites than the poor. The ANC is not and never has been on the side of the poor.
White people are not oppressed by the ANC. We have been genuinely oppressed by the ANC. Our poverty is criminalised and we are subject to unlawful evictions and all kinds of state violence. Striking miners were massacred in 2012 and miners have now been deliberately starved to death by the state in Stilfontein. Many of our leaders have been assassinated, and some of our leaders continue to live under death threats and at serious risk of violence.
We have worked, for almost twenty years now, to build solidarity with progressive organisations in other countries, such as social movements, tenant unions, and trade unions. We have also worked with some human rights organisations because we are often not believed when we say that we have been repressed until a human rights organisation does research and then confirms that what we are saying is true. We have built connections all over the world and have addressed the European Union and United Nations committees.
However, we have never called for sanctions against our country, or for any actions that would damage our society and make things worse for ordinary people. All we have called for is solidarity to end political repression. We offer that same solidarity to comrades facing political repression elsewhere in the world, such as Brazil, Kenya, and other countries.
AfriForum is trying to build a white international, a white international that is willing to do serious damage to our society, to damage our health care system and worsen unemployment so that they can continue to feel special because they are white and to be treated differently because they are white. It is reckless and unpatriotic for anyone to go to powerful right-wing forces outside the country, to lie to them and encourage them to attack our country. It is unacceptable for any South African to collaborate with racists in the US to undermine our country and put its people at risk.
Trump and the right in the US have been looking for an excuse to attack South Africa ever since we took Israel to the International Court of Justice. They want South Africa to become a client state of the West, like Kenya or Rwanda. Many white liberals in South Africa make the same demand. AfriForum’s lies about white people being oppressed in South Africa have given Trump the excuse he was looking for to attack South Africa to punish South Africa for standing up for justice for the Palestinian people.
We do not forget that the United States government supported apartheid for many years. Ronald Reagan was a strong supporter of apartheid and supported the violence against our people in the 1980s.
In this situation, broad united fronts around shared minimum commitments will be necessary. It is necessary for progressive governments, especially in the Global South, to unite around matters of shared principle, such as support for the people of Palestine. This can reduce the risk of individual countries being isolated and punished.
It is also important for popular progressive movements and trade unions to unite across borders on questions of principle, and against the rise of the right in many countries. There must be support for any country that is isolated and punished for its support for Palestine.
Here in South Africa it is necessary for the progressive forces to unite and make it clear that we oppose the general oppression of the poor and the repression of the organised poor under the ANC-led government. We all need to make it clear that we oppose the abandonment of the working class, the corruption of the ANC government, the xenophobia of the government, and the way that it has carried out land reform. At the same time, we must all make it clear that we support the principle of land reform, rural and urban, that we support the principle of the human value of land being placed before its commercial value, and that despite our very serious disagreements with the ANC, we all fully support its decision to take Israel to the ICJ.
Despite facing very brutal repression from the ANC-led government, our movement will use its connections abroad to oppose the propaganda peddled by racist organisations such as AfriForum, and the racist South Africans living in the US.
We will be engaging with progressive trade union federations to try and develop a combined position and strategy for a way forward for diplomacy by the poor and the working class. We need to tell the true story of South Africa.
Abahlali baseMjondoloWebsite
Abahlali baseMjondolo (The Residents of the Shacks) is a movement of the poor in South Africa. Abahlali is an autonomous, democratic, membership-based social movement comprising more than 150,000 members, operating in 93 branches in 4 provinces. Their politics are rooted in a universal commitment to affirming and defending human dignity as they struggle for land and housing, to foster communities of care, self-nourishment, and solidarity.
Abahlali baseMjondolo (The Residents of the Shacks) is a movement of the poor in South Africa.
Our movement condemns the reckless and racist actions of AfriForum in inciting the white right in the United States to act against South Africa. These actions have now resulted in a potentially highly damaging Executive Order against South Africa by Donald Trump.
The rise of the far right across Europe, as well as countries like Argentina, India, Turkey, and the Philippines, is deeply concerning for all people of good conscience. Here in Africa we have Western-backed right-wing governments in countries like Kenya, as well as the dictatorship in Rwanda. The return of Trump as the US president is a major threat to the whole world.
Trump is an extreme racist who uses fascist language about migrants from countries like Mexico and Haiti and now wants to welcome white migrants from South Africa as ‘refugees’. Trump is close to a number of far right-wing white South Africans living in the United States. Two closely related right-wing organisations here in South Africa, AfriForum and Solidarity, have been lobbying the American right for years to try and misrepresent white people as victims in South Africa.
Now we face a very serious situation in which Trump has moved against South Africa. US support for health care services for people living with HIV and AIDS may be withdrawn, South Africa may be expelled from AGOA, and there could even be sanctions. This could be devastating for our health care system and worsen the existing crisis of unemployment. Sanctions would have a disastrous impact on our society.
We condemn the actions of AfriForum and Solidarity in the strongest terms and support the call for a broad front across political lines to isolate these two organisations. These two racist organisations are built on white supremacy and have intentionally misled the American right about the land question in South Africa, and falsely claimed that the general crisis of violence in our country, a crisis that affects the poor most of all, is a political attack on white farmers.
The members of AfriForum did not face the brutality of apartheid and colonialism. They were not robbed of their land. The leaders of AfriForum are not jailed and assassinated when they oppose the ANC. Some of their members are poor, but very few white people live without access to water and sanitation, very few white people live in shacks, and white people have the lowest level of unemployment among all races in South Africa. AfriForum and Solidarity have never expressed concern about the impoverishment and landlessness of most black people. These are organisations that exist to protect white privilege and to keep the status quo.
We welcome the actions by white South Africans of good conscience to clearly oppose the lies told by AfriForum and its attempt to build an alliance with the right in the US. It is important for white people to say that AfriForum does not speak in their name.
We do not agree with the ANC’s policies on land reform and we have no confidence that new legislation will bring about real urban and rural land reform, let alone land reform in the interests of the poor and centred around the political agency of the poor. We have always made it clear that if the government is serious about land reform, they must start by first giving ownership of the land that has already been occupied by the poor in urban and rural areas, by supporting ongoing land reform from below. As we write this statement, the ANC continues to collaborate with militarised private security companies to defend the interests of the rich, and to try and use the courts to evict us from land occupations.
The new legislation is nothing but another piece of paper that will not be implemented. When land reform does happen, it is far more likely to benefit the politicians and other politically connected elites than the poor. The ANC is not and never has been on the side of the poor.
White people are not oppressed by the ANC. We have been genuinely oppressed by the ANC. Our poverty is criminalised and we are subject to unlawful evictions and all kinds of state violence. Striking miners were massacred in 2012 and miners have now been deliberately starved to death by the state in Stilfontein. Many of our leaders have been assassinated, and some of our leaders continue to live under death threats and at serious risk of violence.
We have worked, for almost twenty years now, to build solidarity with progressive organisations in other countries, such as social movements, tenant unions, and trade unions. We have also worked with some human rights organisations because we are often not believed when we say that we have been repressed until a human rights organisation does research and then confirms that what we are saying is true. We have built connections all over the world and have addressed the European Union and United Nations committees.
However, we have never called for sanctions against our country, or for any actions that would damage our society and make things worse for ordinary people. All we have called for is solidarity to end political repression. We offer that same solidarity to comrades facing political repression elsewhere in the world, such as Brazil, Kenya, and other countries.
AfriForum is trying to build a white international, a white international that is willing to do serious damage to our society, to damage our health care system and worsen unemployment so that they can continue to feel special because they are white and to be treated differently because they are white. It is reckless and unpatriotic for anyone to go to powerful right-wing forces outside the country, to lie to them and encourage them to attack our country. It is unacceptable for any South African to collaborate with racists in the US to undermine our country and put its people at risk.
Trump and the right in the US have been looking for an excuse to attack South Africa ever since we took Israel to the International Court of Justice. They want South Africa to become a client state of the West, like Kenya or Rwanda. Many white liberals in South Africa make the same demand. AfriForum’s lies about white people being oppressed in South Africa have given Trump the excuse he was looking for to attack South Africa to punish South Africa for standing up for justice for the Palestinian people.
We do not forget that the United States government supported apartheid for many years. Ronald Reagan was a strong supporter of apartheid and supported the violence against our people in the 1980s.
In this situation, broad united fronts around shared minimum commitments will be necessary. It is necessary for progressive governments, especially in the Global South, to unite around matters of shared principle, such as support for the people of Palestine. This can reduce the risk of individual countries being isolated and punished.
It is also important for popular progressive movements and trade unions to unite across borders on questions of principle, and against the rise of the right in many countries. There must be support for any country that is isolated and punished for its support for Palestine.
Here in South Africa it is necessary for the progressive forces to unite and make it clear that we oppose the general oppression of the poor and the repression of the organised poor under the ANC-led government. We all need to make it clear that we oppose the abandonment of the working class, the corruption of the ANC government, the xenophobia of the government, and the way that it has carried out land reform. At the same time, we must all make it clear that we support the principle of land reform, rural and urban, that we support the principle of the human value of land being placed before its commercial value, and that despite our very serious disagreements with the ANC, we all fully support its decision to take Israel to the ICJ.
Despite facing very brutal repression from the ANC-led government, our movement will use its connections abroad to oppose the propaganda peddled by racist organisations such as AfriForum, and the racist South Africans living in the US.
We will be engaging with progressive trade union federations to try and develop a combined position and strategy for a way forward for diplomacy by the poor and the working class. We need to tell the true story of South Africa.
Abahlali baseMjondoloWebsite
Abahlali baseMjondolo (The Residents of the Shacks) is a movement of the poor in South Africa. Abahlali is an autonomous, democratic, membership-based social movement comprising more than 150,000 members, operating in 93 branches in 4 provinces. Their politics are rooted in a universal commitment to affirming and defending human dignity as they struggle for land and housing, to foster communities of care, self-nourishment, and solidarity.
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