'The task of the century': Selfbestuur and the battle against the central state
Afriforum’s new documentary is entitled Selfbestuur (self-governance, a taking charge of one’s destiny).
Previous Afriforum documentaries have provided great challenges to previously ‘settled’ history, concerning the ANC’s struggle (Tainted Heroes) or the history of the South African land issue (Disrupted Land). Tainted Heroes changed my life, to be honest.
This documentary, however, represents Afriforum’s vision for the future, and provides for us the reason why, despite being a powerful and successful organisation, it has never contested elections. As they have stated themselves, they have bigger ambitions than that.
The beautifully made short film, presented by Ernst van Zyl (who kindly had me on his show in 2021) ends with a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
Every generation only faces one choice, which is whether we will take on the task of the century.
What is the task of our century?
South Africa here provides the answer for the world. Our task is to break free of a central, totalizing liberal regime. We can only do this as real communities who share faith, heritage and a determination to restore competence and beauty to how we live.
It is precisely this that ‘liberalism’ has attempted to melt away, in a bid to dismantle all competition to its ideology of the individual as a blank slate.
There is no time any longer to ask permission or to negotiate. Such a future must now be built. There is nothing else to be done.
We have seen horrors for years now.
Whilst unemployment improved around the world after the 2008 financial crisis, those numbers belie a new gig economy in which frenetic stress to make debt repayments and feed a family have become the work of multiple jobs.
In South Africa, you must do this in the midst of utter state failure. State provision of power, health, security and water is collapsing or has collapsed. War-like conditions prevail around the country, especially after the chaos of lockdowns. Farmers face a murder rate of a 100 per 100 000 annually, three times the average rate for the rest of the country, whilst the President denies that farm murders even exist.
But in this chaos, South Africa is not alone, not anymore. The country is being joined in this descent by the likes of the US, where chemical spills, unchecked homelessness, crime and substance abuse are all destroying the social order. Not to mention the racial struggle sessions. Britain’s GDP per capita is set to sink below the nations of Eastern Europe, even as it flings open its borders to the world. Everywhere a sense of malaise pervades.
Over and above this, we have seen how little the state cares for its people, locking us up, muzzling our children, inflicting sexual insanities upon our way of life, and mandating totally fake vaccines.
We are no longer, I believe, in an age of anarcho-tyranny. We are in an age of liberal terror. The state will no longer refuse to protect you even as it smothers you in bundles of ‘longhouse’ style rules.
It will now attack you itself.
And the flagship nation of this era, built upon a progressivist constitution, profoundly at odds with the beliefs and hopes of its citizens, a nation built on ‘rainbowism’ and affirmative action, equally points to solutions which the netire globe will have to learn and embrace at some point.
What is to be done?
Selfbestuur points towards a blueprint based on demographic destiny and freedom found within common culture, common land, and common institutions…
The documentary, which features leaders from Solidarity, Afriforum, Sakeliga, Orania, and the DA (along with the insightful analyst Robert Duigan) begins by pointing out the madness of the central state in South Africa.
The northernmost town in South Africa is as close to the Congo as it is to Cape Town.
South Africa is larger than Britain, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, and Italy combined, with greater differences in culture and language.
And forcing all South Africans under one total state, has not made a rainbow, but some kind of grey mess of crime, poverty, pollution, and tension.
Why must we live like this?
Federalism - The Swiss and South Tyrolean Examples
The documentary proposes federalism - with Switzerland the prime example.
Here I must point something out. It will be noted in the future that the covid event was a significant moment in flattening cantonal autonomy in Switzerland. Even before that, the culture of Geneva and Davos had flattened the old rugged Swiss peasantry and their sense of independence in each canton. There were cantons that voted against the covid regulations in referenda, but they still had to conform with the national policy.
Whilst Switzerland is certainly better run than almost any other country in the world, its federalism, shorn of anything vital, any kind of faith, will kneel at the feet of overlords.
The documentary goes on to explore in detail the regional autonomy of South Tyrol within Italy. South Tyrol, historically an Austrian county, was offered to the Italians by the Allies if they attacked Germany and Austria-Hungary during World War I, which they did, losing around 400 000 lives in the process.
Thus the province became part of the nation ruled by Mussolini, despite being majority German-speaking. They found their language and culture severely oppressed by a Fascist leader who initially viewed Germanic culture as backward in comparison with Latin civilization. Interestingly, unlike other Germanic regions, Hitler did not claim any rights to the region, in exchange for an alliance with Italy. Prior to this, Mussolini had prior been at the heart of the Stresa Front, alongside France and Britain, aimed against Hitler’s regime.
And so the region would remain with Italy, as a small minority in the country.
The inhabitants, however, always refused to be assimilated, desiring instead to retain their own identity. And it now retains 90% of its revenue, whilst still being a net contributor to the Italian state, of which it is the wealthiest province.
The region now retains ties of friendship with Afrikaners. Its leaders offer this piece of advice - to survive, you have to believe in the future. It sounds simpler than it is. All around the world, whole peoples have decided not to preserve their culture, not to build for the future, and not to take on the risk and adventure of selfbestuur.
Cape Independence?
The documentary then turns to the Western Cape province in South Africa, where the ruling ANC receives less than 30% of the vote, but still rules owing to the centralist nature of the state. Education, policing, power, are all dominated by national policy and departments.
But the south-west of South Africa is demographically different to the rest of the country. Afrikaans is the first language of the majority, while isiXhosa is next with 25%, and then English with 20%. Over 75% of the people do not speak a black African language.
Racially, black Africans make up a third of the province, but more than half were not born there, but have likely fled the economic wasteland that is the ANC-governed neighbour, the Eastern Cape. ‘Coloureds’ (descendants of both European settlers and indigenous Khoisan) make up just less than half the population and whites 17%.
The documentary does not criticize the province’s ruling party, the liberal Democratic Alliance, which obviously remains a potentially important partner for Afriforum. But the section in which Helen Zille, the chairwoman, admits she needed to be advised of the province’s constitutional rights is telling.
When she was premier of the province, she wanted to put an end to endless police escorts of minor national politicians which continuously disrupted traffic. The ANC government obviously told her she did not have the authority to do so. But when she took legal advice, she was pointed to the following sections of the Constitution:
Section 146
National legislation that applies uniformly with regard to the country as a whole prevails over provincial legislation if any of the following conditions is met:
a. The national legislation deals with a matter that cannot be regulated effectively by legislation enacted by the respective provinces individually.
The section goes on to outline that if a provincial law does not harm other provinces or threaten the national economy or national security, then the provincial law ‘prevails over national legislation.’
Of course, what cannot be regulated more effectively by a province is now virtually nothing.
Whilst Zille goes on to speak at great length about testing this via provincial policing and taking over where the state has failed, it seems obvious that such a move is not within the DNA of her liberal party.
Most of their voters are to their right and want a much firmer devolution away from the ANC centre, yet the DA is only now trying to catch up with their voters’ sentiments as the country completely falls apart. Even very recently, the party has been speaking of possibly ruling alongside the ANC in a coalition. This is not the language of freedom and self-governance. This was equally borne out by the party’s zealous enforcement of the ANC’s globalist covid lockdowns, alongside its zealotry in introducing ‘wokeness’ and LGBT activism in the province’s schools and public spaces.
It is by no means guaranteed that they will retain their majority in the Cape in the 2024 elections.
Maybe this is why the documentary then turns next to Orania, the Afrikaans town in the Karoo, which is an experiment in living out autonomy in the midst of a nation-state hostile but equally lacking capacity.
The Orania Movement
Orania is very controversial amongst the liberal intelligentsia, including those who oppose the ANC, because it is unapologetically a town for Afrikaners.
Imagine telling a normal person from any other century that a small town in a desert which a tiny minority of a nation’s minority has built with their own hands, is now controversial? Orania even contributes to the ANC state and asks for nothing in return yet.
Joost Strydom, the leader of the Orania Movement, lays out poignantly the case against the liberal, central state.
He states that the idea of freedom has always been tied to community. You cannot be a free individual if you are merely at the mercy of a large state apparatus that does not recognise your language, your culture, or your faith.
In words that will likely make the Left’s skin crawl, he argues that freedom relies on a people having their own land, using their own labour, working with their own institutions.
He points that unlike many South Africans, citizens of Orania do not stand around the braai at the end of a day and obsess over the ANC. Instead they say, “We are one day closer to freedom and this is what it looks like.”
‘This is how our ancestors built - this is how we can do it again’
But Orania is small. It has fewer than 3000 citizens. It is purposefully building slowly to maintain sustainability, as the long waiting list to move there demonstrates.
It serves as a forerunner.
Flip Buys, the leader of Solidarity, a bastion of Christian trade unionism which gave birth to Afriforum, points out that while demographics are destiny, the problem the Afrikaner faces in South Africa is not low numbers, but distribution.
Afrikaners number in the millions, but they are spread throughout the country and find themselves as minorities wherever they live.
The proposed answer to this is the concept of ‘anchor towns’ - towns which in the chaos of ANC rule, are effectively redeemed by members of Afriforum, who start providing security and services with the long-term goal of attracting more Afrikaners to that town.
Over and above this, Solidarity has its own charity for the poor and has established a university and a technical college for teaching and training using Afrikaans, alongside guilds and the business association that is Sakeliga - named for the free cities of the Hanseatic League.
The funding all comes from tiny monthly donations from vast numbers of people.
As Flip Buys states, ‘This is how our ancestors built many of the hospitals, schools and universities in this country… and this is how we can do it again.’
Ernst Roets, another Afriforum leader, points out that none of this will come about from asking the government for permission, but rather people should simply make this vision such an indispensable reality the government will have no choice but to accept it.
To be sure, Afriforum is clear that they will never undemine the state, but that is deteriorates from the top, new realities will be built.
Russell Lamberti of Sakeliga explicates it this way:
The battle between chaos and order is only just beginning and communities that care about order, and that are organised, are going to be able to carve out a future for themselves.
Is this task of the century achievable?
I do wonder if this will get uglier than people currently imagine.
The July Riots of 2021 demonstrated how thin and fragile the thin line between current South African decay and utter anarchy is.
The looting and chaos did wake many people up. Suddenly inventories were taken of weapons, patrols set up and modes of communication established. Civilians took on police functions then, and if they have to do it again, they will be readier and even more forceful.
Currently the country is reeling under the weight of its worst ever power cuts, with most of the country having electricity less than half the day. In an industrialized country, this is killing jobs and morale - again, at the same time it is incentivizing masses of people to opt out of the grid.
And once you no longer rely on the state for power or security, how much loyalty can you still possibly owe to the state?
For some, this will mean a new era of self-reliance, inspired by Afriforum and its allies. But for others, this may well mean a new era of looting and indiscriminate violence, possibly inspired by the ANC and its Stalinist former youth wing, the Economic Freedom Fighters, currently the third biggest political party in the country.
How these two groups resolve their inherent tension will decide the fate of all South Africans. The former will certainly be organised and ready.
Perhaps it all comes back to the South Tyrolean advice:
How willing are we all to fight for the future of our own people?
Very thought-provoking, and thank you to John Carter (elsewhere in the comments) who publicised this post via his Telegram. A great deal of what you say makes immense sense to ,me Chris.
I lived in ZA for more than a decade but left in the mid-80's.
Part of me still misses the place and toys with the idea of returning, which I've only done for short spells twice in all of that time. I'm in the UK btw and see similar decrepitude of infrastructure and society in our near-future. As you mentioned.
What persuades me otherwise is to talk to family members still living there (almost all in Gauteng). A nephew of mine left ZA in January and his mum (my sister) seems to be thinking of doing the same: she has not been able to find work for several years. She is highly intelligent and experienced, holds more qualifications than I could even name, but job reservation - to call it what it is - more or less debars her, and she's in her 50's now so there's that too. The nephew landed a decent-sounding job in London within a couple of weeks btw. Her husband pretends all is well and plods along, which I admire in some ways, but will create a schism - if it hasn't already.
My concern with the cantonisation of ZA is that it might be Bantustan II i.e. the 'best' areas seized by certain social groups and/or American corporations, with the squalid areas of urban and/or rural deprivation left as favelas (as was described by Rian Malan some years ago already).
It's interesting to see how the folks with Afrikaner culture strongly in their background are making a go of it. Family and/or religion - or at any rate some kind of actual value system - are a major asset in exploring self-determination and making a success of it.
I wish them well and look forward to reading more of your stuff Chris.
(P.S. Job reservation was the trade union practice, long before formal apartheid, which debarred non-white people from many trades, let alone professions. A great deal of the administrative framework for apartheid was created by England, but that is not a part of history that is exactly forefronted...)
Great post, thank you - and it lead me to watch the documentary too. I'm not Afrikaner, but I have huge respect for their abilities and strength. I belong to even smaller minority, trying my best to leave my language and culture to my children and guard them from globalist/liberalist nonsense (to parents out there - did you know that "Trolls 2" shows a male birthing a child?).
The state of SA is really atrocious. It's great to hear of a movement that has hope, drive and a plan to change things. Really inspiring. Thanks