Over the past two decades populism has swept the world, bringing to power the likes of Viktor Orban in Hungary, Donald Trump in the US, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Narendra Modi in India — and leading the UK into Brexit.
These elected leaders have, to a greater or lesser degree, advocated “illiberal democracy”, where the government tampers with the independence of the judiciary and attempts to centralise power. They’ve also engaged in what former Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naim calls “pseudolaw”: passing laws that undermine democratic constitutions, tampering with the separation of powers, and restricting voting rights. Many have initiated vexatious litigation to delay justice, if not entirely deny it. And, as Naim argues, they have all promoted xenophobia, played identity politics and propagated conspiracies — all with just the slightest whiff of violence on their breath.
Sound familiar? South Africa has seen its own share of populists — or at least populist tendencies — in its political leaders. Think former president Jacob Zuma and the ANC, or the Patriotic Alliance’s (PA) Gayton McKenzie, or ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba. There’s EFF leader Julius Malema and his inflammatory rhetoric. And the DA, too, can be said to have occasionally strayed into that territory.
The origins of populism
Populism espoused by the likes of Trump doesn’t accord with the broad understanding of the term — the desire of “ordinary people” to have a democracy that represents them. The rise of such leaders is instead the result of what Nelson Mandela University’s Prof Christi van der Westhuizen calls “reactionary populism”.
To understand this difference, it’s helpful to turn to Jewish-German philosopher Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Arendt believed there were three types of populism: “the people”, “the mob” and “the masses”. “The people” for Arendt, was a diverse society capable of building public institutions, uniting around something like a constitution and creating “a shared world”.
“The mob”, in contrast, was formed from those groups left behind by capitalist development. These were “superfluous men” who had been “spat out” by society. They were “the residue of all classes” — which “makes it easy to mistake the mob for the people”.
These elected leaders have, to a greater or lesser degree, advocated ‘illiberal democracy’, where the government tampers with the independence of the judiciary and attempts to centralise power
While “the people” seek a system that will, as far as possible, look after diverse interests, “the mob” will look for a “great leader” to pursue partisan goals. And, she points out, the “great leader” will often create “fictitious worlds” and systematically lie about facts. The leader creates fantasies — such as Reichs lasting 1,000 years, or conspiracies about Jews or foreigners undermining society.
In Arendt’s view, one of the first of these “great” leaders was typified by Cecil John Rhodes, who led “the mob” of white men who found their way to South Africa during the gold rush. Rhodes, she argued, portrayed all the symptoms of the megalomania that we would see in the mid-20th century: he had countries named after him and wished to be remembered for 4,000 years; he captured the public imagination by claiming to want to build not a wall, but a railway from Cape to Cairo.
He was also deeply undemocratic. As prime minister of the Cape he pushed through the Franchise & Ballot Act of 1892, restricting the Cape’s franchise. And in the Cape’s 1898 election he produced Trump-like bluster, telling the electorate: “You want me. You can’t do without me.” During that election, he played another populist card, declaring he would hand over mining rights to struggling miners around Kimberley. In this, he was the “supporter” of the “working man” — and many were his devout followers.
He had a scapegoat, too, in Transvaal president Paul Kruger, who he regularly claimed was funding the opposition in the Cape — a claim that was wholly untrue.
When he lost the election, Rhodes simply refused to recognise the result — a familiar tale today — and tried to get his friend, Cape governor Alfred Milner, to overturn it. When Milner refused, he tried to get the courts to invalidate the results.
Rhodes’s politics in the Cape had all the hallmarks of modern populism as identified by German historian Jan-Werner Müller: capturing state institutions, corruption and “the suppression of anything like a critical civil society”. And though he failed to win the 1898 election, he did capture the imagination of those white men who felt excluded by their society. And he encouraged them to commit startling acts of violence and murder in both Rhodesia and the Boer republics.
‘One long scream of resentment’
Historian Tony Judt identifies the origins of the current rise in reactionary populism as the collapse of steelworking communities in northern France in the 1990s. Voters who had always been staunchly communist began voting for the neo-fascist National Front, a party whose political programme constituted “one long scream of resentment — at immigrants, at unemployment, at crime and insecurity, at ‘Europe,’ and in general at ‘them’ who have brought it all about”.
This wasn’t simply a matter of unemployment; it was the loss of a 100-year working culture and sense of community, says Judt.
As Nobel prize-winning economist Esther Duflo explains it: “If you’ve been making furniture for 25 years and that job goes away, it’s not going to be easy to just become a janitor. The image of yourself is completely shattered.”
It’s a trauma that can have significant political effects, and become a point of mobilisation for opportunistic politicians.
UK academic Matthew Goodwin takes a different tack. He believes the search for “one type” of supporter or “one motive” underlying current populism is unhelpful. Many Trump voters are affluent, though most lack a tertiary education; what binds them, he says, is a suspicion of privately educated elites — and, perhaps more importantly, an emotive sense that they are being excluded from society and a dominant progressive culture. “National populism”, Goodwin suggests, is about “plain people” seeking to control political decision-making.
But this doesn’t explain why the likes of Boris Johnson or Trump are their chosen leaders. Far from being representatives of the people, in Arendt’s sense, they are closer to Rhodes and his “mob” rule. They care little for democratic systems and have eroded public institutions. And what they have certainly not done is offer their supporters a role in decision-making and an alternative grassroots democracy.
Their vision of state corporatism, and Malema’s endorsement of luxury goods such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton — are not policies of the left wing. Instead, these policies and attitudes, along with a stated desire to centralise power, bear the hallmarks of mid-20th-century European fascism
South Africa in the maelstrom
Of apparently great concern to many in South Africa is the rise of the country’s third-biggest political party, the EFF, which shows all the signs of Arendt’s “mob rule”.
Van der Westhuizen suggests Malema and the EFF’s economic policies are synonymous with “reactionary populism”. “Economic freedom” — their vision of state corporatism, and Malema’s endorsement of luxury goods such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton — are not policies of the left wing. Instead, these policies and attitudes, along with a stated desire to centralise power, bear many of the hallmarks of mid-20th-century European fascism.
Then, she writes, there is Malema himself and the EFF’s “open promotion of violence” — from his early statements that he would “kill for Zuma” to his recent outburst: “Shoot to kill! Kill the boer, the farmer!”
What is more, the EFF’s “labour inspections” at restaurants in Gauteng last year were also arguably a sign of a rising anti-foreigner politics.
Van der Westhuizen points out that a 2018 survey suggests that, like Trump (and indeed Rhodes), EFF supporters are a mix of economic and social backgrounds. According to data from Citizen Surveys, a Cape Town research institute, nearly half of EFF support emanates from the middle-class quintile and 13% from the top quintile of wealthy people. In contrast just one in three supporters are from the working classes, and virtually none are among the poorest of the poor.
Just how the lowest quintile will behave at the polls in 2024 is not easy to predict — but it is worth noting that working cultures and communities, particularly on the mines, are under threat. Their collapse is a danger few seem to acknowledge. The slowdown in mining, and the impact of the movement away from coal, as well as environmental activism, may have some unintended outcomes.
For example, University of Zululand sociology professor Paul Stewart tells the FM “intractable” issues surrounding the Tendele coal mine in northern KwaZulu-Natal — potential evictions, environmental concerns and long-running court battles — have led the mine to retrench workers in a community where unemployment sits at 72%.
Just what the political outcomes of these sorts of social disruptions will be is hard to know, says Stewart. But populism has fed off such situations in other countries. And the EFF and McKenzie’s PA have both made headway in recent by-elections in rural and urban areas.
But this is not all when it comes to populism. As University of Cape Town lecturer Jacques Rousseau tells the FM, populism often “involves hypocrisy or cynical exploitation of causes to garner public support”.
Again, the disjunct between the EFF leaders’ moneyed lifestyle and the economic grievances of its professed constituency comes to mind.
Other parties also “[engage] with this low-hanging” fruit, says Rousseau — including the non-populist DA. By way of example, he refers to the party “discussing ‘wokeness’, immigration, or language policies at Stellenbosch University”. And DA federal executive chair Helen Zille in her book Stay Woke: Go Broke attacks supposed educated elites, labelling academics and members of the media as “nochschleppers” (tag-alongs).
Take all of this together — and factor in ramped-up campaign rhetoric ahead of a heavily contested election in a year’s time — and the stage could be set for a perfect populist storm.
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