Yesterday, Jacob Zuma patronisingly attempted to curry favour with white Afrikaners by telling a gathering of Afrikaner interest groups that: "Of all the white groups that are in South Africa, it is only the Afrikaners that are truly South Africans in the true sense of the word".
The ANC does this every election. It is the well-known "divide and rule" tactic which authoritarian racist governments always use to divide their opponents. Zuma thought he was flattering Afrikaners. He was actually insulting them. The implication of Zuma's message was clear: "By seeming to flatter, I can actually fool you all into forgetting about the corruption allegations against me. By pressing the ethnic button, I can also distract your attention from the ANC's power abuse." This is an outrageous insult to every Afrikaner.
But it was not surprising to see the leader of the Freedom Front Plus (FF+), Pieter Mulder, warmly welcoming Zuma's comments. He does this before every election, when we are treated to a little mating-dance between the ANC and the Freedom Front Plus. Like the ANC, the FF+ believes in emphasising ethnic divisions. As a tiny minority, the FF+ behaves as if its salvation lies in sucking up to the ANC rather than confronting it. The DA, on the other hand, believes in building a new majority, to defeat the ANC in elections, so that we can offer real opportunities without an oppressive, racist government putting arbitrary obstacles in the way of citizens. In a constitutional democracy you don't have to beg for your rights, as the FF+ does. You claim your rights, as the DA does - for everyone.
The good news is that Afrikaans-speaking voters never fall for the ANC's divide-and-rule tactics. They never have. Last night I spoke to a group of Afrikaans-speaking South Africans in Upington, and when I mentioned Zuma's comments, they said: "He should really stop trying to patronize us".
The ANC always tries to divide and rule before elections, and this is a classic case. It suits the ANC to divide South Africa into separate boxes of race and ethnicity, because then it will be able to rule forever, and that is exactly what it wants to do.
The Freedom Front Plus (FF+) doesn't understand this because it agrees with Zuma that everybody should go into their separate ethnic box. Like Zuma, the FF+ is out of touch with the Constitution. It would rather spend its time trying to secure a piece of semi-desert for Afrikaners to be isolated from the rest of South Africa than building a united nation, where everybody feels they belong. The ANC also wants Afrikaners to be isolated and separated from the rest of South Africa. That is why it was so appropriate that Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema paid an official visit to Orania recently. They demonstrated how much the ANC and FF+ have in common: they both fundamentally support the politics of ethnic division.
The FF+ believes that it can negotiate good deals for Afrikaners by begging, bartering and bargaining for favours from the ruling party. This approach offers no protection for minorities. On the contrary, as we have seen in Zimbabwe, minorities end up having to demonstrate more and more subservience in return for fewer and fewer favours. They have to pick up the crumbs tossed from the table of the dominant patronage party. And they end up sacrificing their constitutional rights. By the same token, through their subservience, they allow the ruling party to entrench and abuse its power, which results in corruption, economic decline, and ultimately, poverty.
Pieter Mulder responded to Zuma's comments yesterday as if they represented some kind of victory for Afrikaners. Does he not know Zuma better by now? Zuma is well-known for telling people what he thinks they want to hear. If Mulder believes Zuma's comments are a victory for Afrikaans-speakers, then he is as foolish as Zuma. Because the truth is that the ANC has undermined the rights of Afrikaners since 1994.
The clearest example of that is the ANC's assault on Afrikaans language rights in schools. The Mpumalanga Education Department, for example, tried to force the Afrikaans-medium Ermelo High School to accept a group of 113 pupils that the Department claimed needed to be taught in English, even though there were other English-language schools in the area where the children could be accommodated. It was left to the Pretoria High Court to enforce the right of Ermelo High School and its governing body to use Afrikaans as the medium of instruction. This is an example of people standing up and claiming their constitutional rights, rather than begging for them.
Zuma's comments yesterday flew in the face of the Constitution. In fact, they showed his disdain for the Constitution, the Preamble to which states that "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity". One of the founding provisions of the Constitution is that there is a "common South African citizenship", and that "[a]ll citizens are equally entitled to the rights, privileges and benefits of citizenship". There are no second-class citizens in South Africa, despite what Zuma thinks.
According to the Constitution, the President's duty is to "uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic" and to promote "the unity of the nation". Should he become President, Zuma would be the defender-in-chief of the Constitution. It is hard to think of a less suitable individual for the job. He doesn't understand the purpose of the Constitution, or the function of a government whose authority is checked and balanced by the Constitution. He doesn't see it as the government's role to protect and defend everyone's rights; he believes that the government is there to dispense rights selectively.
If our bitter history has taught us anything, it is that to avoid becoming a failed state, and to make our constitutional democracy work, we must do two things. We must prevent South Africa from becoming a one-party state by supporting a real alternative that is big enough to take on the ANC. And we must come together to assert, protect and defend each other's rights, because all rights - including the right to citizenship - are indivisible.
The only real alternative for South Africa is to build a new majority: a new majority that is based on shared values and principles, not on arbitrary criteria such as ethnicity or race. South Africa needs a new majority founded on the values of the Constitution, which recognises and protects each person's cultural and language rights, and the right to freedom of association on the basis of these rights. Under a new majority, these rights will be far more secure because everyone protects them, not just the minority directly affected.
This is the alternative the Democratic Alliance promotes. And at present we are the only party in South Africa that promotes this alternative in principle, policy and - where are in government - practice.
This article by Helen Zille, first appeared in SA Today, the weekly online newsletter of the leader of the Democratic Alliance, April 3 2009
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