Fixing South Africa

Post-colonialism from a right-wing perspective

Every so often, you hear from the left that colonial borders are artificial, and yet they froth at the mouth with rage when you suggest they ought to change.

The trouble with the apartheid plan was that there was no sacrifice - the Afrikaner nationalist state simply could not give away enough land to turn the Bantustans, the former homeland areas demarcated during British conquest, into functioning states.

Sure, there were some benefits for the four that were given governing autonomy (Bophutatswana, Transkei, Ciskei and Venda), but overall, these were somewhat cramped, and the development policy implemented by the state, while expensive, was insufficient.

Today, there is nobody responsible, and the sacrifices the Afrikaners should have made when they could, were made for them - all the white settlements have been overtaken by black urbanisation and land invasions, wealth has been redistributed through the tax system and BEE, and racial quotas have chased away much of the educated elite.

Aside from the jealous possessiveness felt by Afrikaners for the land, there were practical obstacles - much of the land that would have had to be given to the Bantustans to make them whole was settled by white farms and small towns, whose votes were essential to maintaining a governing majority for the NP.

And they couldn’t give up on the racial labour caste system, because the economic engine room was dependent on a steady supply of cheap labour. But that sacrifice was made for them too - the general strike of ‘73 and the student uprising of ‘76 lead to the Wiehan report of ‘77 which concluded that the system was unsustainable, and the state began winding down their segregation policies until the whole system capsized.

Thus ended both separate development and baasskap, with the democratic unification of South Africa.

But South Africa remains divided. The Western Cape is actively undermined by national police, who have deliberately protected the gangs since 2011, causing the homicide rate to skyrocket. KwaZulu is a crimescene of hundreds of political assinations, caused by divided loyalties simmering in the aftermath of the Peoples War, which took 20 000 lives, and divided Zulu nationalists from black nationalists, and created a climate of violent dispute resolution that has not gone away.

Black people and racial minorities remain firmly divided on all political issues, and the determination to define South Africa primarily by the black race leaves all other groups on the outside, constantly measured for loyalty to black interests. Voting patterns are profoundly racially divided.

The majority of black people simply do not believe others deserve to be here as much as they do.

People with different ethnic identities living in separate states is largely a good thing - a common ethno-cultural continuum helps keep corruption and foreign interference at bay, and ensures greater political participation from the broader public. It also results in a far more peaceful and harmonious society.

But it also cannot be forced upon them - a state that has had its borders determined by outsiders tend to harbour a long and seething resentment, which can come out in many different ways. And if people of nominally different ethnicities broadly wish to remain together and share political values (though this is almost impossible to achieve), then why not let them be together?

The anticolonialists do have a point - most African states are fundamentally unstable - ethnic loyalties across the borders and disloyalties within them often lead to violent civil wars and spillover conflicts, like the simmering bloodbath in the eastern Congo, where Rwandan tribal tensions still shape the Kivu provinces of the DRC.

Now that South Africa is beginning to crumble, and secessionist movements are popping up, it might be time to consider what a post-South African order could look like.

At the moment, there is a burgeoning Cape independence movement, with two parties running for parliament next month. And in KwaZulu-Natal, the Abantu Batho Congress, a black-nationalist party with ties to the Zulu Royal Family, has called for the independence of KwaZulu and the expansion of Lesotho.

The consequences of these three national movements will be that South Africa will be left much smaller, with two out of three economic hubs, plus the judicial capital of Bloemfontein stripped away. If the Northern Cape decides to join the Cape Republic, the Eastern Cape would be disconnected from the rest of South Africa.

Of course, the Free State is far less likely to be absorbed into Lesotho than the Cape or KwaZulu are to secede, but once the ball gets rolling, maintaining a unionist consensus will be much harder.

A more equitable solution would be to take this process to its logical conclusion, and dissect the country according to its prevailing ethnic differences. Adrian Frith has made some very interesting maps of ethnic subdivisions according to national census data.

The process for achieving this would simply be a series of local referenda asking various communities whether they wish to secede from SA and join a neighbouring state.

The easiest would be the Northern Cape, the western parts of the Eastern Cape, North-West Province and Mpumalanga. The Xhosa would be extremely unlikely to join these secessionist states, which would leave most of the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Gauteng floating as a discontiguous rump state.

But some of the rump makes sense - the smaller nations of the northern Transvaal can’t maintain independence on their own, because they are too small and rural, and Gauteng is a rich and cosmopolitan region with no meaningful agricultural land. The two were made for each other.

The Eastern Cape, of course, would be somewhat reduced, and would, as the most loyal voting bloc for the ANC, likely remain staunchly black-nationalist. So I called them Azania, after the name they picked for South Africa as a whole. And I left them with Port Elizabeth, because after all, they do need a functioning port, and PE (Gqeberha now) has too much black-nationalist sentiment to properly integrate into the Cape peaceably.

This likely won’t happen, but I like the excercise. I think it would be best for the long-term stability and prosperity for the whole region, contain economic fallout, and create a sense of belonging for all.

As for the Afrikaners, another solution remains, a network of charter cities stretching from Kamiesberg in the Northern Cape to the border town of Nelspruit, running through Pretoria. This plan is in its infancy, and may not come to fruition, but if successful, will safeguard national interests and keep them from the state dependency their leadership is increasingly opposed to.

May we all feel free to dream.