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Book Review Friends of the Natives: The Inconvenient Past of South African Liberalism. Eddie Maloka. 3MS Publishing, Durban, 2014. John Pampallis, Umsebenzi Online, Johannesburg, 12 March 2015 In its origins in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe, liberalism was associated with the struggle against feudalism and absolute monarchies and the introduction of representative democracy. Liberalism, as an ideology of the rising middle class (or bourgeoisie), saw the freedom of the individual as the central problem in political life. The business interests of this growing middle class were being stifled by autocratic governments that privileged the interests of the landed aristocracy. Governments, liberals believed, should interfere in economic life as little as possible; their main functions should be to protect individuals from being harmed by others, protect private property, maintain law and order, protect the integrity of private contracts, and look after other matters of common concern such as defence and the expansion of the state by engaging in colonisation or aggressive war. Thus, the state should look after the common interests of the entire bourgeoisie, advance those interests and mediate conflicts between individuals and groups to ensure the stability of the system. As liberalism developed it promoted concepts such as the individual's freedom of expression, freedom of religion and of opinion, freedom of association, equality of all before the law, government by elected representatives of the people, the right to own property, and so on. Liberalism was the dominant - although not the only - ideology in the newly emerging capitalist states of Western Europe and North America. Capitalism, buttressed by liberal ideology, led to an enormous expansion of economic production and trade as well as a rapid expansion of science, culture and learning of all types. As capitalism grew, so did an alliance between the bourgeoisie and the old landed aristocracy which found ways to profit from the capitalist system. In the area of personal freedoms and civil liberties, liberalism promised much more than it actually delivered. For example, the American Revolution of 1776 is generally considered to have been one of the great liberal revolutions, but the USA continued to practice legal slavery for more than eighty years. In only one country (New Zealand in 1893) did women get the vote before the beginning of the twentieth century; in the USA it was only in 1920 and in France not until 1944. In most of Europe's colonies in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australasia, indigenous populations were kept subjugated and oppressed until recently, and millions continue to suffer the effects of that subjugation. The British Liberal Party, when it was in power in the nineteenth and early twentieth, embraced the colonial project and pursued it vigorously, often with great ruthlessness and brutality. Liberal equality before the law, unmitigated by state protection for the poor, always favoured the rich. As the French poet and novelist, Anatole France wrote sardonically in 1894, "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." Nonetheless, liberal thinking was undoubtedly a leap forward compared to what preceded it. Its ideas continue to influence progressive people and movements today, and most South Africans are proud that our struggle has resulted in liberal freedoms that are protected by our Constitution. These freedoms have long been part of the programmes put forward by the liberation movement - for example, in the Freedom Charter. Despite this, though, liberalism has never been an ideology embraced by any significant section of the oppressed people in South Africa. Eddie Maloka's book, Friends of the Natives, begins off with a curious, thought-provoking question: "Why," he asks, "has South African liberalism been so 'white' all these years?" Liberals have, after all, always claimed to have the interests of the Africans at heart. Indeed, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, liberals described themselves as "Friends of the Natives", hence the title of the book. Liberals took on themselves the task of being spokespersons for (and interpreters of) African interests as well as interlocutors between Africans and the colonial (and later the apartheid) authorities. Liberalism was never the dominant ideology among South African whites and was always eclipsed by the harsher and explicitly racist ideas associated with Afrikaner nationalism. Although liberals have claimed to represent the interests of the black majority, they have won little support among oppressed black people. Maloka accounts for this by arguing convincingly that South African liberalism has never had a liberatory purpose; it has been paternalistic at best. Its unwillingness to work with black political organisations on the basis of equality and its determination to work strictly within the laws of the succeeding colonial and racist regimes nearly always put it firmly on the side of oppression. The main aim of South African liberalism, Maloka argues, has always been to protect and advance the interests of the white minority. He backs this up with a review of the history of liberalism. He takes the reader through "Cape liberalism" in the Cape Colony in the second half of the nineteenth century, which had a non-racial franchise for males but maintained white domination through educational and economic qualifications. This is followed by an analysis of the post-Union period when liberals in the mainstream white parties gave increasing support to segregation, and of the post-1948 apartheid period when liberals in the United Party and then the Progressive Party (PP) opposed the "excesses" of apartheid but still adhered to the idea that Africans were unable to rule themselves. This idea manifested itself in the PPs embrace of the concept of a qualified franchise - votes only for those who qualified by having a particular level of education and income. This would have excluded most blacks and would have resulted in a white majority among the electorate! Of course they recognised that sometime in the distant future blacks would become the majority. This, they thought, was unfortunate, but they believed that by that time blacks in government would be sufficiently "civilised" to rule together with whites. When the PP's successor, the Progressive Federal Party (PFP), eventually accepted the idea of a universal franchise, it was only within the framework of power-sharing that would protect minorities. So the European liberalism's traditional emphasis on the freedom of the individual had been extended very explicitly to the protection of groups - in particular the already very privileged whites. Maloka acknowledges the role of the much smaller Liberal Party which disbanded itself when the Prohibition of Improper Interference Act of 1968 made it illegal for political parties to include members of different race groups. However, its hostility to working with communists, among other things, prevented its cooperation with the ANC and led to its non-participation in the Congress of the People. After1994, the Democratic Party (DP), the latest manifestation of South African liberalism, began to pursue a strategy of attracting "minorities" to try to create a united anti-ANC bloc. First it wanted to consolidate the white vote. It largely achieved this through the merger of the DP with the New National Party (NNP) that resulted in the Democratic Alliance (DA). Although this alliance only lasted about a year and the NNP leadership then took their party into alliance with the ANC, the NNP's base - most of the white and a large proportion of the coloured electorate - remained with the DA. The DA has worked hard to cement this racial alliance (which remains mainly under white leadership), citing the supposed danger of African domination of minorities (like the apartheid government's swart gevaar of old!). This strategy has essentially been successful as is apparent from the results of the 2014 election where white, coloured and Indian voters voted overwhelmingly for the DA. The duplicity of the DA's arguments are summarised by Maloka: "The politics of 'groups' are acceptable to the DA when the 'minorities' strategy is pursued", he says, "but unacceptable when it comes to matters of empowerment and redress." Maloka, understandably, casts doubt on the likelihood of DA's quest is to attract the black middle class voters. Its policies, which have been tailored to protect minority interests, are unlikely to appeal to blacks. One of its tactics here has been to resort to an old liberal trick. In apartheid times, when the electoral majority was made up of Afrikaners, it was essential to win a portion of the Afrikaner vote if the liberal parties were ever going to gain power. So they appointed Afrikaner leaders - Jan Steytler and Frederick van Zyl Slabbert at different times - in an effort to win Afrikaner voters. It was not successful then and it is unlikely to be successful now as the DA tries to win black voters with the likes of Lindiwe Mazibuko, Musi Maimane and (almost) Mamphela Ramphele. Apart from examining the role that South African liberalism played in politics over almost two centuries, one of Maloka's main aims is to counter the view of liberalism as a progressive force that contributed to the liberation struggle in South Africa. In particular since Helen Zille became the leader of the DA, the party has made a concerted effort to portray itself as an important contributor to the liberation struggle For example, they have tried to equate the roles of liberals like Helen Suzman and Colin Eglin to those of Nelson Mandela and other leading figures of the liberation movement. Helen Zille herself is described in a DA pamphlet as a "leading anti-apartheid critic". The liberal parties' refusal to cooperate with the African organisations that opposed apartheid and its support for the qualified franchise are no longer openly acknowledged. Nor is the DA's debt of support to the National Party's voter base for providing a large part of its current electorate. Interestingly, such attempts to distort and appropriate history were criticised by former DA leader, Tony Leon. Maloka in fact took his subtitle from a pragmatic piece of advice given by Leon to opposition parties like his own: You've got to stay in the future business; if you get into a contest about the past, the ANC is going to beat you every time. . I am aware that their Struggle wasn't as heroic as they pretend, but they have all the moral authority, because they represent the disempowered. There is always a danger if you start reliving the past that a lot of inconvenient truths come out (pp 19-20). Maloka writes with passion without coming over as a propagandist. Friends of the Natives is like a breath fresh of air. It is perhaps the only full-length book about South African liberalism written by a non-liberal. For this alone it would be worth reading. Maloka has marshalled a strong case for characterising South African liberalism as an important source of ideas sustaining colonialism and racism rather than an ideology of liberation. He has also made a strong argument that the current political instrument of liberalism, the Democratic Alliance, remains an organisation mainly aimed at protecting white interests. The book does have its weaknesses, however. First of all, the editing and proofreading are very weak. The index is one of the worst I have ever come across; it is skimpy, eccentric and virtually useless for reference purposes. This is unfortunate as it makes the book more difficult for researchers to use. For a book that ought (and probably will) be used for scholarly and research purposes, this is a serious weakness. The chapter titled Postscript is, rather oddly, the second to last chapter. One gets the impression that it was dropped in rather gratuitously at the last moment to take account of the Mamphela Ramphele/Agang aborted merger with the DA. Anything of any significance in this regard could easily have been included in other chapters. Now that the DA is the official opposition and controls one province, our second largest city and some other municipalities, it and its ideas are worthy of closer attention than they have previously been paid by non-liberals. Friends of the Natives is a good start. Liberalism is likely to remain a significant political creed in South Africa - not least because of its global strength as a political ideology, its backing by much of big capital and its support by a significant and well-heeled minority of the South African population. . This is a longer version of a review that appeared in the Cape Times, 13 February 2015, and the Sunday Independent, 16 February 2015 From: http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=4649#one -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
