As every magician knows the old tricks are the best, and the ANC sure uses that old trick of appropriating a word to mean what it is wanted to mean. Putin calls the Ukrainians "fascists" because he knows hatred of fascism resonates in Russia, and BDS calls Israel "apartheid" and shamelessly accuses it of perpetrating holocaust and genocide, because that is the most odious crime imaginable.
To digress: even if the worst exaggerated lies of its enemies were half-true, nothing Israel has done approaches the definitions of holocaust or genocide: total intentional destruction of an ethnic, religious, national or racial group (such as the Nazi destruction of European Jewry , the Ottoman murders of Armenians or the Hutu killings of Tutsi in Rwanda) . In fact the Palestinian population has increased to four million from three million in the last decade; the very antithesis of genocide.
Similarly the ANC calls any political opponent or critic a "racist", because that word resonates in SA. In none of above examples does it matter whether there is any substance to the word being appropriated, because its use alone has the desired effect, which is not to debate but to delegitimise and demonise. It is 70 years since the fascists were defeated in Europe so do not expect any respite just yet from the ANC.
Be that as it may there is a new game in town, put in play by the ANC, but ably assisted in its electoral ambitions by fellow travellers such as the politically active Independent Newspapers and those who Stalin called "poletzno idiot" (useful idiots), cultivated as usual within the Humanities faculties.
Take Liz Cowan's piece "White SA must wake up fast" recently published in the Cape Times. While her principal theme "there is no place for racism and nothing will excuse it" cannot be faulted, she bizarrely drifts into the stereotyping she professed to abhor. For those who missed it or gave up on it, Ms Cowan's thesis is simple: Whites are almost all racists simply because they are white; her definition of a racist being: "any person who is white".
That of course makes things much easier for the ANC and for those enjoying a career in the race industry, because any comment from a white person, deemed unacceptable, is automatically classified as racist by virtue of the colour of that person's skin, without having to waste time substantiating the accusation.
At the same time any comment (even clearly racist or blatantly hate-speech) made by a black person would automatically not be racist. That is because premises one: "white persons are racist" and premise two: "black persons are not white persons" lead to the conclusion: "black persons are not racist".
Presumably any future student that follows in Ms Cowan's steps to study Humanities, will just have to stomach this flawed rationale; that is if it catches on and replaces the more usual form of logic as practiced since the times of Aristotle.
The position of the 20 000 mainly black opponents of the ANC who marched in Johannesburg however is obviously a challenge; presumably they cannot be racist for the reason set out above ( although one could take a written opinion on this from an expert), so perhaps "sell out" , another word with dreadful connotations, will have to do.
Now we don't know if any of this is having any effect in the real world. The mass of the voters don't access the press or the Internet and many do not know or care what skulduggery our masters are getting up to, but what they do know is that basic service provision, employment and education is in deep crisis.
Middle class and mainstream voters of all races probably see through the tactic, and minorities of various hues are fearful with good reason of any kind of nationalism, which of course can't be racist (for the reasons set out above) but dangerous anyway. What is certain is that mindless social media, virtuous commentators and a motivated media are getting excited about it and inciting the more manipulable amongst us.
What is also clear is that the DA, other opposition parties, large corporations (Standard Bank and M-Net for instance) and the authorities are being led by the nose and reacting to the agenda set by the ANC, instead of confronting its irrationality when appropriate. Just because the ANC says that Chris Hart or Gareth Cliff's comments were racist doesn't mean they necessarily are, and shouldn’t mean those corporations are obliged to do acrobats to accommodate ANC opportunism.
Moreover it seems that the rule of law becomes suspended once the word “racist” is uttered. In the matter of the Zuma Must Fall billboard in Cape Town (immediately denounced by ANC racist-sniffers) the contraventions of The Rule of Law and the principle of Legality, important because no democracy or economy can prosper without respect for those concepts, caused little comment. In that incident and one in Johannesburg where a DA poster suffered similar treatment a group of people (1) decided a crime had been committed, (2) made a finding of guilt (3) decided on a sentence and (4) carried out the sentence.
These are functions that would normally be carried out by separate organs of state: the legislature, the police, the NPA, and the courts. In other words mob rule; no different to vigilantism. This is a new and serious challenge to constitutional democracy and yet there has not been a peep in this regard from any political party, NGO, media or institution.
Is the protection of the constitution now subjugated to politically manufactured taboos?
