Howard Barrell Thabo Mbeki has led the African National Congress away from its past non-racist principles towards a narrow Africanism to hold the ruling party together, according to a Democratic Party analysis of ANC thinking on race. “Mbeki’s vision of ‘racial transformation’ [represents] a decisive break with the non-racial tradition of the party, as articulated by Luthuli, Tambo and Mandela,” the DP says in an analysis circulated at the national conference on racism in Sandton this week. The party says its leader, Tony Leon, was denied an opportunity to address the conference. Whereas the ANC’s president for much of the 1960s, Albert Luthuli, advocated equality of opportunity, Mbeki argued for equality of outcomes – that is, equality as measured by an institution’s degree of demographic representivity.
“Where [ANC president for most of the 1970s and 1980s, Oliver] Tambo had argued that ‘non-racialism’ meant no discrimination on the basis of race, Mbeki stated that discrimination was an acceptable means to achieve a ‘non-racial’ end. And where [Nelson] Mandela called for South Africans to see themselves as ‘one nation’, Mbeki stated that the ‘reality’ was that South Africa was ‘two nations’,” the DP writes in the document, entitled Why the ANC Needs ‘Racism’ to Survive: The Political Agenda behind the National Racism Conference. This shift was signalled at the ANC’s conference in Mafikeng, which had endorsed a call to “assert African hegemony”. The ANC had also decided that “employment patterns and practices within ministries and government departments should reflect the demographic aspects of our populations”. In the process, writes the DP, the ANC turned the state “into an instrument of political patronage rather than an instrument of delivery”. Claiming that “the major obstacle to delivery was the fact that the ‘forces against change’ (the ‘old guard’) were still in positions of power”, the ANC argued that, when they were “replaced with ‘forces for change’ (that is, ANC cadres) the state would be able rapidly to deliver. “However,” says the DP, “these policies merely led to a massive loss of skills and experience and the promotion of ANC politicians.” One reason the ANC resorted to this approach, according to the DP, was to maintain itself as a liberation movement rather than as a party more narrowly focused on particular interests. There were tensions between competing interests within the ANC and patronage had to be used to keep the black elite and middle strata loyal to the ANC. “The focus on maintaining elite unity, rather than delivering to the black population as a whole, has also contributed to a massive increase in inequality within the black African population,” the DP writes. “The ANC,” it says, “is now the ‘mouthpiece’ of an ‘oppressed nation’ with radically divergent class interests.” In these circumstances, “the sole unifying message” the ANC has been able to find “remains race”. The DP says: “Mbeki has sought to downplay such intra-black inequality and has continued to emphasise the relative wealth of the white population. He has also sought to create a new enemy, a new ‘racial oppression’ – for which whites are held responsible – against which the movement can unite. “The threat that the post-apartheid deracialisation of the middle classes posed to the ruling party was that black South Africans (interacting as equals with white South Africans) would lose their sense of colour and, with it, their loyalty to the ANC.” The ANC’s submission to the Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) hearings into the media revealed that the ANC believed “all whites carry a stereotype of Africans, all the time”. Drawing on passages in the ANC’s HRC submission, the DP adds: “The logic of the ANC is thus: all whites carry around a ‘stereotype of Africans’ as corrupt, anti-democratic, dictatorial, etc. This stereotype informs and directs whites in their relations with black South Africans. “Therefore, if whites criticise the ANC (‘the African government’) for being corrupt and dictatorial, they are merely giving vent to ‘the repulsive stereotype of the African barbarian’. Thus, because such criticism is motivated by ‘unashamed racism’, it is illegitimate and should be silenced.”
This, says the DP, “is a fairly crude and transparent attempt to silence dissent”.
Moreover, for the ANC, the fact that whites (as a group) are, on average, better off than black South Africans (as a group) also constitutes racism, and means that ‘power relations’ are skewed in favour of whites. The ANC, according to the DP, “blames the persistence of high levels of poverty, illiteracy and unemployment in the black population on continued ‘white racism’, (rather than on, for instance, the failed policies of the ANC)”.
Several conclusions follow from this ANC thinking, according to the DP: l In order for the ANC to uplift the black majority, it “must shift the power relations in favour of black South Africans. This provides a justification for the extension of ANC control over all ‘centres of power'”;
l “Black South Africans cannot be racist because of the prevailing power relations”; and l “Because whites cannot change, the ANC [is] justified in removing whites from their ‘dominant positions’ in society. “It is at this point,” the DP writes in its document that, “meaning is inverted”.
The DP writes: “According to ANC theorising, Africanism is non-racialism; for it seeks to improve the ‘power position’ of the black majority. Liberalism is ‘racist’ for it limits the ability of the ANC-controlled state to ‘use its collective strength to improve the power position of those who are disadvantaged’ and allows the white minority (in civil society) to ‘exercise [their] power, unfettered by anything.'” Moreover, according to the DP, for the ANC, “non-racialism (or colour blindness) is ‘racist’ for it seeks to limit the means (such as racial discrimination) by which the ANC seeks to advance ‘democratic representivity’.”
This would constitute what the ANC calls “colour-blind racism”.