President Thabo Mbeki has revived an old pastime: attacking ”white liberals” and political opposition in general.
In his letter (”Off-key sweet birds sing the same tune”, January 14), Mbeki drew from a new year message issued in 1971 by late ANC President Oliver R Tambo in which Tambo criticised a certain so-called ”sweet bird”, whom he said was ”in favour of change but determined to prevent change”.
The ”sweet bird” in question was none other than Helen Suzman, whom Mbeki refers to only as a ”white South African liberal politician”.
Today’s ”sweet birds”, said the president, are those who reject the ANC’s policy of deployment, criticise its black economic empowerment programme and chafe at its control of national debate.
These ”sweet birds”, the president claimed, are ”objectively opposed” to real change in South Africa, even if they may subjectively claim that they are in favour of it.
Thus an old charge against white liberals is revived, along with the claim that the ANC has a monopoly on change and all other political alternatives are illegitimate.
What is it about the ”white liberals” that so enraged the ANC then, and that irks the president today, more than 30 years later?
Perhaps the two halves of the term should be considered separately. The word ”liberal” refers simply to choice. Liberalism can be broadly defined as the idea that individuals have the natural right to make their own choices, and that the power of the state to control or interfere with these choices should be limited.
There were, and are, liberals of every colour. The unique dilemma of white liberals in an apartheid context was that our political beliefs indicated that we should oppose the government of the day, yet our skin colour allowed us to take advantage of the racial privileges its policies had provided.
People and political parties responded to this dilemma in different ways, resulting in a splintering of white liberals among various parties. In addition, white liberals came under constant attack from the apartheid government on the one hand, and radical movements on the other.
One case was that of the late Peter Brown. He was a staunch and distinguished liberal opponent of apartheid and the chairperson of the Liberal Party. He turned his back on a life of ease and privilege, and for his troubles was banned and marginalised and harassed by the apartheid government. Yet when he passed away last year, his death was ignored by Mbeki — no state funeral, no eulogies, no letters extolling his example.
His liberal values, however, have lived on in post-apartheid South Africa. Indeed, as many commentators have pointed out, the conflict between African nationalists and Afrikaner nationalists was essentially settled by the adoption of liberal democracy.
Our new Constitution is a liberal one — perhaps the most liberal in the world in its provision of rights and its creation of checks and balances on the power of the ruling party.
It is precisely this liberal framework that the ANC now wishes to undermine and bend to its will.
The ANC and its president now apparently resent the terms and restrictions of the settlement they agreed to in 1993 and 1996 and are actively, albeit subtly, undermining both its spirit and its letter.
That is why the ANC has begun to criticise the judiciary and call for changes in its ”collective mindset”; that is why it has drastically reduced Parliament’s powers of executive oversight; that is why the president has delved into the archives of anti-liberal fulminations by ANC leaders.
It is worth remembering what kind of organisation the ANC was in 1971. It was ideologically, militarily and financially dependent on the Soviet Union and her satellites. It denied membership to white people; it did not accept the concept of a Bill of Rights, now central to our Constitution; it reacted harshly towards anyone who did not agree with the use of violence in the struggle against apartheid or who opposed economic sanctions against South Africa. The ANC insisted there was only one way to fight apartheid — its own way.
Similarly, today it claims that there is only one political morality in South Africa, one party that can aspire to represent the interests of the people. Time and time again, the ANC demonstrates its Manichean view that it inhabits a separate moral universe. The Boesak pardon is only the most recent example. Support for the ruling party exonerates all sins.
The president’s veiled attack on Suzman marks the second time in recent weeks that Mbeki has attacked an icon of the anti-apartheid struggle. What Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Suzman have in common, aside from being the target of the president’s wrath, is that neither ever joined the ANC. They fought for freedom in their own way, and did not shy away from criticising the ANC and its actions
— nor do they today.
Let us hope that these ”sweet birds” — and many others — continue to sing, whether harmoniously or discordantly, as dawn lifts over the second decade of democracy in South Africa.