IMRAAN BUCCUS | The SA white liberal establishment and the crisis we face

At the height of the state capture crisis, when it seemed that democracy may not survive Jacob Zuma’s kleptocracy, there was clear alignment between parts of the white liberal establishment and the national interest. The kleptocracy, and the move to authoritarianism to protect it, was a serious threat to society and we all had an interest in opposing it.

This alignment was always complicated though. For one thing the liberal establishment gaily assumed that it could and should tell us all what should come next. The majority were simply excluded from any role in discussions of what should follow the Zuma disaster. This was a serious problem as the poor and working class majority have very different economic interests to the elite.

Moreover it was clear from the beginning that the astroturfed campaign against Zuma was an elite-driven and top-down project. Trade unions and social movements were opposed to Zuma, and made this very clear, but did not feel able to support the liberal NGO-dominated form of opposition to Zuma’s kleptocracy. 

But despite these issues, there was still some sense that the liberal establishment was acting, even if via its usual elitism, in the national interest. This included the white-dominated media and a group of liberal NGOs which, at that moment, were seen as a valuable democratic asset by many.

Claims were made about South Africa supplying weapons to Russia and being bribed by Iran to take Israel to the International Court of Justice without a shred of evidence being provided. Critics of the West were ridiculed as being dupes of Russian and Chinese propaganda, or even patsies for Russia and China, again without any evidence being provided.

However, that temporary sense of alignment between the white-dominated liberal establishment and wider society has now been shattered on the anvil of the growing crisis in the Middle East. This break is particularly intense with the part of the liberal media and NGO complex dominated by white English speakers, which is where the strongest pro-West sentiments are found.

With Greg Mills of the Brenthurst Foundation in the lead, this faction of the liberal establishment took an extreme and often feverish pro-West position after Russia invaded Ukraine. Anyone who wondered why the same concern for white people in Ukraine was not being extended to the wars in Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen was summarily accused of ‘whataboutism’ and denounced as being ‘pro-Putin’. 

As the liberal hysteria built up a huge head of steam, conspiracy theories became common. Claims were made about South Africa supplying weapons to Russia and being bribed by Iran to take Israel to the International Court of Justice without a shred of evidence being provided. Critics of the West were ridiculed as being dupes of Russian and Chinese propaganda, or even patsies for Russia and China, again without any evidence being provided.

Despite all this, some argued that the lack of concern for the victims of the wars in Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen, wars that have taken a vastly greater number of lives than the war in Ukraine, was understandable in light of the lack of coverage of these wars in the international media. The problem, it was said, was that the international media had no regard for African lives but was deeply concerned by white suffering in Ukraine and that this explained the dynamics in the South African liberal establishment. 

But now that we have all witnessed the destruction of Gaza, the ongoing abuses and killings in the West Bank and the attacks on Lebanon in the international media, those arguments hold no water. It is now crystal clear that powerful currents in the white English-speaking liberal establishment, including in the media and NGOs, just do not care about the lives of Palestinian and Lebanese people in the same way that they care about the lives of Ukrainian people. 

The frenzy of moral outrage at the mediatised killing of white people has not been extended to the mediatised killing of brown people. Where there had been intense moral outrage there was now silence, or even justification for mass murder. The double standards could not be clearer.

But, of course, most South Africans are appalled by the wanton murder of Palestinians, and now Lebanese people too. Most South Africans know settler colonialism when they see it and are on the side of the colonised. Most South Africans are well aware of the history of colonialism and do not assume that we should be uncritically aligned with the West. All this has meant that the sense of common purpose between the liberal establishment and wider society achieved during the state capture crisis has been pulled apart.

The trade unions and social movements that opposed Zuma but didn’t join the astroturfed NGO-led campaign to have Zuma removed are all strongly in support of Palestine. They are now directly antagonistic to the white-dominated liberal establishment. There is also a general disquiet in wider society at the failure of the liberal establishment to show the same concern for Palestinians and Lebanese people that it did for Ukrainians. 

That establishment often assumes that it should give leadership to society. This emerges clearly in some media and NGO projects. However, now that it has lost its moral authority among most black South Africans, and among progressive whites too, it has scant chance of being seen, as it was during the state capture crisis, as being on the right side of history. 

The white-dominated liberal establishment has significant power in the media and NGO worlds and its fall from grace is a significant shift in power relations. This has left a considerable vacuum in our public life, one that creates space for other forces if they can be astute enough to take some of the space that has now opened up.

Dr Imraan Buccus is research fellow at DUT and a political analyst