Many of the ANC’s founders and leaders in the decades after 1912 were, in broad ideological terms, liberals. Lawyers, teachers, newspaper editors, doctors and nurses from across the country galvanised chiefs and other traditional leaders to support them to form the organisation in 1912.
These were people who believed in property rights and the robust defence thereof by the state. They believed in some form of a free market, the rule of law and civil liberties for all, as defined by Thomas Hobbes and Adam Smith. They were not Marxists.
They could not believe that the government of the day (in 1912) intended to grab land from ordinary black farmers and black titleholders with the first raft of land acts of 1913. Yet this outrage happened, violently, robbing black people of large tracts of their country.
These ANC leaders so believed in the rule of law that they challenged the new land legislation in courts in SA and in Britain, fighting their corner despite racism and colonialism. They believed in the rule of law and in its potential to provide justice even as the second raft of land grabs, in 1933, totally destroyed black land ownership. This second wave gave 87% of SA to whites. ANC leaders did not take up arms. They challenged all this in the courts.
These liberals underline the problem with racism. Racism refuses to see people in their many facets and complexities.
Part of the tragedy of the unexamined, unchallenged, unspoken, unthinking, lingering racism within the DA, for example, is that it refuses to see the liberalism of many black voters.
Racism refuses to let them in fully despite their commitment to liberal values, in theory and practice. These liberals have been denigrated, their dignity soiled, their humanity undermined, by utterances from party leaders glorifying colonialism and the apartheid state.
It has become impossible to be a black liberal in SA"
The tragedy of this is that it has become impossible to be a black liberal in SA. It has become impossible to join the DA without casually being dismissed by party leaders who refuse to see what colonialism and apartheid did to this country.
It is incredible that so many in the party are rejoicing at the departure of a Mmusi Maimane or a Herman Mashaba. Without them, and so many others like them, the DA becomes a small, inward-looking, illiberal white party. It should not be.
The ANC is running its last mile. The only way it can stay in power is if the electorate remains unenthused and uninspired by the current crop of opposition parties, their messages and their leaders.
So where is the liberal opposition?
Let me segue. For those who follow these things, the star of the Democratic National Convention in the US last week was Michelle Obama, the former first lady whose speech exhorted voters to dump Donald Trump because he was "the wrong president" for the US.
The second most powerful speech was by a Republican and former rival of Trump’s, John Kasich, who said he would vote for Joe Biden, a Democrat.
"I’m a lifelong Republican, but that attachment holds second place to my responsibility to my country … In normal times, something like this would probably never happen. But these are not normal times," he said.
This is the message that many ANC members would have been ready to give the DA if only it showed empathy for black indignity under apartheid and displayed a commitment to all South Africans, not just whites — or just white farmers.
The gap is wide open for a liberal-democrat opposition. Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC’s last great hope, is under siege from within. His chances of success are diminishing by the day. The mountain of rot started and stoked under Jacob Zuma is overwhelming. Ramaphosa does not look like a man with much of a chance.
Liberals, the black middle classes, are waiting for a party that will respect their dignity while standing for liberal-democrat values, from individual liberties and free markets to justice, small government (with universal health care and other caveats), gender equality, tolerance, democracy, secularism, racial equality and rationalism. Tragically, the DA of Helen Zille is not that party.
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