South Africa's Government of Neoliberal Unity

That's where you have to begin. You begin with the recognition that the stance of the West towards Africa is entrenched and unchanging, that the status quo of, subordination and exploitation will always be a policy priority for the West, which they will pursue by any and every means. And what means they will employ will be determined by the viability in any given circumstances. They'll do it by violence when that's viable, and by other means when violence is not viable. By means of manipulation and economic coercion through debt, financial aid, or the promise of financial aid, or by tampering in domestic politics and elections, and so on.

And of course, as colonization and imperialism have always done, they will utilize local agents and collaborators to act on their behalf. Well, that brings us to the Democratic Alliance, which is a radically neoliberal, western aligned, elitist political party of colonizer collaborators. The DA has received funding from among others, the National Endowment for Democracy, which is regarded correctly as a wing of the CIA. They received funding from the Conrad Adenauer Foundation, the Friedrich Noman Foundation, the Open Society Foundation of George Soros, which has a long history of involvement in backing so called color revolutions. And they've received funding from the Atlantic Council.

Now all of these institutions are advocates of neoliberalism, and they all serve the interest of Western private sector power. The DA has a close relationship, with the, Israeli and the British governments, and an extremely close relationship, with the Americans. They frequently consult at the American Embassy in South Africa. They have meetings there on a regular basis. They get funding from, as I said, the NED and from USAID, as well as training and capacity building support from the US government, including through programs such as the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, both of which are, subsidiaries, if you will, of the National Endowment for Democracy.

It's transparently, a western instrument for neoliberal colonial, control. And I don't think that there's any reason to not view the DA as a hostile actor in South Africa. Because to be advocating for neoliberal policies in South Africa today, you have to be either insane or insidious. You have to either not understand the devastating impact that these policies have had on the society and on the economy for the last thirty years, or you have to want that devastation, which means that you are either too incompetent to lead the society or you're too contemptuous of the society to be given leadership. But here we are.

The ANC either because of naivete or by because of coercion or because of corruption or some combination of all three, the ANC aligned itself with neoliberal thinking to one degree or another for decades. And the tremendous suffering, the inequality, the poverty, the strife that this has caused inevitably led to both a decline in the ANC's popularity, but also to a rise in anti neoliberal opposition parties. I believe that the West knew, America knew, that the ANC was losing its grip on power. And if they lost their grip on power, then that meant that, there was a danger that South Africa itself might slip from the grasp of neoliberal control. Because this is what politicians are for in the West.

In the western approach to politics, a politician's job is to implement unpopular policies that are dictated to them by the private sector. And so that then they can take the blame for the disasters that are caused by those policies, and then they can take the fall. Then they can be removed from power only to be replaced by a new set of automated mannequins who will continue the same policies. Because under the neoliberal model, power actually rests in the private sector, not in the government. Politicians are just decoys to divert attention away, from the unelected owners and controllers of global financialized capital who remain unaccountable, but who remain in charge even as politicians come and go.

But the problem in South Africa is that there are parties vying for power who actually genuinely oppose neoliberalism and who approached politics and governance from a position of principle. So the West needed to ensure that their interest would prevail. And they threw their support, therefore, behind the DA to infiltrate the government, ironically, to prevent regime change in South Africa, which is the opposite of what they normally do. And now, you have the DA, which is so radically neoliberal that they make the ANC's neoliberalism look moderate. You see, you can you this is how you shift the the center of gravity of political discourse to the right.

That way, any seeming concession by the coalition government will still end up being in your favor, in the favor of the neoliberals. As I say, they had to do this because you have parties in South Africa, like, for example, the EFF, which is championing for the nationalization of key economic sectors. So to offset that, to ensure that any conciliatory gesture in that direction will still be acceptable to neoliberal goals, when you have to have a rabidly capitalist party that's calling for the privatization of everything. This is similar to what, Ariel Sharon did in Israel when he created the Kadema party. After he he created the Kadema party after he first drove the Likud party even further to the right than it already was.

So then he created Kadema as a fake moderate party because it isn't enough actually to fix the two ends of the spectrum of discourse. You have to also fix the middle. You have to define what the middle is, define what the moderate position is. So in my opinion, the ANCDA government can never truly represent any sort of middle ground in South Africa. The GNU is actually not a government of national unity, but a government of neoliberal unity.

It's a government united against the people of South Africa in my opinion. And their solidarity, the GNU's solidarity is with a parasitic predatory colonizing Western private sector power, not solidarity with their own citizens. With regards to what the GNU means in terms of, socio socioeconomic justice in South Africa, the GNU poses a grave and imminent threat to socioeconomic justice in South Africa, in my opinion. And that's coming at a time when South Africa is already grappling with catastrophic socioeconomic injustice already. So we're we're we're we're talking about, an already critical situation.

The people of South Africa are like a boxer who's been getting pummeled for half the fight already, and now his opponent is in the corner getting a shot of adrenaline and PCP. Whatever advances might have been made in post apartheid South Africa, they're gonna be reversed. This isn't a case of one step forward and two steps back. This is a case of one step forward, on a conveyor belt that's going backwards. You should view this government, this GNU, as essentially a colonial regime.

Now that's not to say that people should approach it with hostility, but they should know that the government is itself approaching them with hostility. Now that being the case, approaching the government itself in a hostile manner would only predictably result in repression, which is something that neoliberalism thrives on. They neoliberalism thrives on social chaos and crisis. So I think that, you'll probably be facing a situation in South Africa, in which the government will actively and aggressively antagonize you. And they'll try to provoke conditions in the society that will allow them to, justify cracking down on activists, cracking down on civil society, cracking down on journalists, and so on.

So I think it would be imperative for people to maintain discipline, to maintain non violence, dignity, and patience even while you're being baited to lash out. You know, in Islam we have this concept of the which roughly translates to the movers and shakers in society, the influential people. The idea being that no matter what sort of a political system you have, at the end of the day, policy will always be decided by the people of influence in that society. So in terms of activism, in terms of trying to confront or challenge or change the regime, in my opinion, the strategic approach is to pursue change through the Either you try to change the composition of the movers and shakers, the influential people in your society, because to one extent or another the people themselves decide who has influence and who doesn't, because you decide whose influence matters to you. Or else you try to become from the movers and shakers in the society yourself.

You try to become influential, which of course isn't that easily done. The most feasible option in my opinion is to try to influence the people of influence. The strategy is to try to influence the influencers. So generally speaking, the most influential people in society, especially in a society that's dominated by neoliberalism, dominated by capitalism, so on, the most influential people are going to be people in the private sector. Business people, owners of companies, investors, and so on.

Now these people tend to have very narrow superficial interests, I e revenues and profits. So depending on, depending upon where they make their money, that might give you options for influencing them by means of impacting their revenues and their profits that that may be in your hands. You know, you may even run across one businessman or two, who are genuinely principled people. Who knows? Anything's possible.

But I would generally, generally advocate for the strategy of engagement, that is directed toward the more influential people in the society, with a view to having them, amplify your grievances, amplify your preferences, amplify your concerns, and the policies that you wanna see implemented and so on. Because they're generally going to be safe from repression. Not to mention their voices, frankly, matter more than the voice of the average citizen. I think you should always think in terms of negotiations. The people are in continuous negotiation with power, and power is in negotiation with the people.

These are actually two powers that are negotiating with each other, except that one of those powers, regards itself as a power, and is regarded as a power, while the other one is not. The people ultimately, actually, are more powerful than the government. The people are actually more powerful than the private sector, private sector elites, which is why the ultimate bargaining tactic or negotiating tactic used by the government and used by the private sector is to make the people think that they're powerless. To make you think that the government is the one who has the power and the private sector is the one who has the power. So I'm in favor of approaching these things with a negotiating mindset.

And, you know, sometimes you do have to negotiate with a hostile actor. You don't just negotiate with friends. In fact, if it was friends, you wouldn't even have to negotiate. So keeping this mindset focused on negotiation, you can hopefully keep your wits about you, you can keep your emotions in check, and you can try to understand the other side. Understand them well enough to know how to navigate towards a positive outcome without causing unnecessary conflict or unnecessary instability.

So for example, personally, I think that it would be immensely beneficial for South Africa to nationalize the mining sector. This is a no brainer in my opinion. If the mining sector had been nationalized thirty years ago, why South Africa would have a sovereign wealth fund today that would have that that that would rival The UAE or Saudi Arabia or Qatar. But okay. In the current political climate, nationalization might seem radical.

So in the mindset of negotiating, you start by calling for other measures that would at least maximize domestic revenue and benefit from mining without nationalization. Or do like Indonesia did with nickel, or Ghana did with cocoa, or or or I think, Chile, is talking about doing with lithium. Where you ban the export of raw minerals and require, refining and processing to be done in your country inside South Africa. Just for example, you know, measures that are short of nationalization, but that would still be a major boost for the economy, and which would be appealing to local companies so that you could recruit their support politically. The point is to be realistic, to be pragmatic, to be practical, and to negotiate in a way, that's not overly confrontational if you can help it.

I don't think that you should ever, see your government, as an enemy, even if they see you as an enemy, and even if they treat you as an enemy. The truth of the matter is that they're trapped, by their own unfairness, by their own unreasonable greed, and their estrangement from the people. It's a miserable state to be in. You know, when you're in that kind of a state, when you're in that kind of a mindset, when you want something that's unfair, you want something that's unjust, then you will naturally feel threatened, you'll feel paranoid, you'll feel defensive, and you'll be reflexively ruthless. You'll do things in that state of mind, that if your conscience ever wakes up, you'll regret.

And we always have to give people a way out, you know, a way out that will allow them to do the right thing without being disgraced for not having done the right thing before now. Reiterate and to revive the public declaration of values and principles, of morals. The a and c, for instance, used to stand for something. They proclaimed noble values at one time. And what you say publicly, what you say, publicly that you believe in, you can be held to account for that.

And you have to justify your policy positions according to the values that you're on record supporting. An appeals can be made to you on the basis of the values that you have articulated publicly. So for instance, rather than taking a posture towards the government of, you know, your terrible people, you take a position of, we know you're better than this. We know you're better than this. So let's reaffirm our shared commitment to equality, to justice, to fairness, and to the upliftment of our people.

And let's course correct together. Keep each other in check a sense of brotherhood, out of a spirit of brotherhood, not reprisal and punishment, just a stubborn, insistent, unwavering accountability to publicly stated values. Now having said all of that, none of this applies to the democratic alliance. None of this applies to the DA, unfortunately. They're not a party that's based on values, and they don't have a track record, as being a party that's based on values.

Thus, I would say that every realistic and strategic effort should be made to discredit the DA and to sever their so called alliance with the ANC until, the DA is no longer a political party in South Africa, but a political pariah.