The content on this page is not written by Polity.org.za, but is supplied by third parties. This content does not constitute news reporting by Polity.org.za.

Right-wing South Africans feeding the false narrative of White persecution are strengthening the hand of populist political parties who believe the Constitution is skewed towards the protection of minority rights and property. 

While the “success” or “failure” of their campaign is presently being measured by the extent of damage to US-SA bilateral relations, the deeper damage they are doing is taking South Africa back to the era of identity focus, distrust and division.  

The fact is that South Africa’s democratic settlement led to no revenge being taken on its White population for their 350 years of minority rule, land theft and oppression. White people retained their land and wealth and continue to be relatively more employed, in relatively better positions, than Black South Africans today. 

White people constitute just over 7% of South Africa’s population today. Collectively, minority population groups comprise approximately 18% of the total population.   

Since October 2018 the DA has announced:

There are many things for South Africans of all colours to complain about with respect to the State’s progress in developing social, economic and spatial justice. The quality of life of the average White citizen is not one of them.   

Non-racialism is a progressive philosophy of universal significance in a world of increasing inequality and displacement. It is a philosophy deeply embedded in South Africa’s Constitution. It was what the world distilled into one word – miracle – to describe the country’s transition to a society in which nobody is more equal than any other. 

The people now selling the poison of White oppression in South Africa are the same people who opposed the country’s transition from apartheid in the 1990s. 

That they were a loud-mouthed and unrepentant minority within a minority, then, was proven by the outcome of the 1992 Whites-only referendum that gave the then-President an overwhelming mandate to negotiate the democratic constitutional order.      

They remain a minority within a minority today. The majority of South Africans are not outwardly racist. 

They rightly feel let down by corruption, crime and the State’s ineffectiveness in developing the proverbial land of milk and honey for all. But even if they think it, they don’t openly attribute the multitude of challenges we face to the fact that most people in the post-apartheid government are Black. 

Yet the minority within a minority is taking us back to the brink of identity politics, where a host of identity-driven political parties are drooling to reap the rewards. 

Those who vote for parties on the basis that they are led by people who look like them or speak their language, be it for the DA or PA in Western Cape municipalities, or for MK in KwaZulu-Natal, are swallowing the poison.   

The GOOD Party calls on its members and supporters, and South Africans in general, to hold the line for equal justice and non-racialism. Hold the line for Ubuntu, compassion, magnanimity, decency and universal dignity. 

Be grateful for what we have and commit yourself to making it better.    

Issued by GOOD Secretary-General & City of Cape Town Mayoral Candidate Brett Herron