Imagine the world presented by vested interests on the basis that “that is just the way it is”. Imagine fixing the gaze in one direction — always. Imagine it all framed by those vested interests, with no different ways of looking at the world.
Now consider that that framing expects, or even forces us, to accept a particular interpretation that becomes embedded in social consciousness and the observer is expected to repeat only that which satisfies particular groups, or that makes us feel good about ourselves.
When “they” do it, it is because they are “cruel” or “barbaric” or “savages”, but when “we” do it, it is for the common good, or it is done “in self-defence”. Imagine such a world. That is the world in which we live.
In this world, Afriforum is “a non-profit civil rights organisation” (that’s how they describe themselves); the Millennium Trust is a “non-profit organisation… with the aim of contributing to the success of South Africa” (that’s how they describe themselves); the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) an independent policy research and advocacy organisation, is South Africa’s leading development think tank (that) has been gathering evidence, generating innovative policy recommendations and consulting widely on issues critical to economic growth, employment and democratic consolidation (that’s how they describe themselves); the Helen Suzman Foundation “promotes constitutional democracy, rule of law and human rights. Our mission is to ensure that key institutions of constitutional democracy in South Africa are strengthened and protected so that they, domestically and internationally, deliver on the Constitution’s promise” (that’s how they describe themselves); The Institute for Security Studies “partners to build knowledge and skills that secure Africa’s future” (that’s how they describe themselves); Solidarity’s goal is that “everyone who wants to work, must be able to work well and reach their full potential” (that’s how they describe themselves); and the vision of the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse, Outa, is “a prosperous country with an organised, engaged and empowered civil society that ensures responsible use of tax revenues throughout all levels of government” — also because that’s how they describe themselves.
That’s all good and well, but (as written previously in this space) one of my favourite 19th century journalists wrote “whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word and believe that everything it says and imagines about itself is true.”
Is that all there is?
Let’s indulge them, and imagine, briefly, that everything the above groups say about themselves is true, because we live in an equal society with justice for all guaranteed by the Constitution.
Except, we cannot accept that that statement about equality and justice covers everything we can possibly know or understand. We, well, some of us who see colour, have to uncover surface forms of equality and justice to reveal the way that historical and vertically segmented privileges shape post-apartheid conditions, expressions — and institutions.
The same would apply to intellectual work on global affairs. This may mean asking those difficult questions, raising uncomfortable issues and (here’s the drop) — who are these people (who established these think-tanks and advocacy movements), what are their stated and unstated intentions, and may we look at them differently?
A departure point for this discussion is understanding the role of an historical bloc, in one particular case as outlined by Inderjeet Parmar, the way that think-tanks in the US, mainly the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, have engineered consent to mobilise society around a particular set of ideas. Parmar’s research looks specifically at “the background of the key members of the endowment, their outlook and the impact their work had in shaping US attitudes”.
The assertion here is this. Almost each one of these organisations was created after the release from prison of Nelson Mandela, when historical white privilege seemed to be under threat. The Institute for Security Studies was established in 1991; the Helen Suzman Foundation in 1993; the Centre for Development and Enterprise was established in 1995; Afriforum in 2006, the Millennium Trust in 2010; Outa in 2012, and Solidariteit, in its current iteration, which is perceptibly a bit of a way off its expressly whites-only origins and support for the whites-only government, was re-created in about 1997.
We can, of course, celebrate this as the outcome of democracy. Well then, as Peggy Lee urged us back in 1969, “break out the booze and have a ball — if that’s all there is”.
‘Keeping the natives on course’
We may also point out that these groups seem to have in common the apparent objective of “keeping the natives on course” — and almost every one of them was started by white people.
Some may claim apartheid-era origins (on the right side of history, of course), but seriously, Suzman was the predecessor of John Steenhuisen; Outa’s creator, Wayne Duvenage is an ex-Rhodesian (with everything that that represents); Solidariteit and Afriforum are a lot more honest about wanting to preserve special privileges for Afrikaners (they do like hiding behind “freedom” or “democracy”, though); and the founder of the Institute for Security Studies, Jakkie Cilliers, has dodgy credentials carried over from the apartheid era… His defence of the apartheid-era origins of “ageing white mercenaries” glosses over ideology. Ag shame, these ageing mercenaries are just trying to make a living, he once told The Guardian.
The Centre for Development and Enterprise’s Ann Bernstein (recipient of an international award named after the right-wing libertarian, Sir Antony Fisher) has gone to great lengths to bring mainly white men from abroad to tell South Africans what to do. Notable among these have been people like Sir Michael Barber (associated at some point with McKinsey, once implicated in corruption, and with Tony Blair, of the Iraq war lies), and Frances Fukuyama, one of the early neocon thinkers in the US, he of the end of history nonsense.
Bernstein seems to also have a fondness for Nancy Birdsall, who has said that social policies should not be directed at equality, and that the world should follow policies that made Anglo-Saxons prosperous. Birdsall has said not all inequality was bad, and that the “central objective of social policies” was toward “enhancing meritocracy” and was “rooted in the Anglo-Saxon tradition”. (See Birdsall’s “Globalisation and the Developing Countries: The Inequality Risk” paper presented at the Overseas Development Council Conference: Making Globalisation Work, International Trade Centre, Washington DC, 18 March 1999, not available online; and “Rising Inequality in the New Global Economy”, published in Wider Angle, number 2/2005.)
Another favourite is Lant Pritchett who (reportedly) wrote the horribly racist memo for Lawrence Summers about the West needing to dump waste in the poor countries that were “under-polluted” (it has, as may be expected, been denied)… I am sure it has been sanitised, by now, but history remembers Summers’ racism and sexism. Another on the list of Bernstein’s friends is Paul Collier, who told Mehdi Hassan that there was “too much diversity” in the West, or something to that effect.
Most of these institutions buy their cred by placing black people in window seats. They cannot possibly be racist or Afropessimist because, why, even black people are on our boards of directors….
It’s the same old story, like that depicted in children’s colouring books; leave the story intact, and simply change the colours of some people and we’re back to where it all started — white people fighting over how best Africans should be governed, and what they (the natives) have to do to be as successful as Nancy Birdsall’s Anglo-Saxons — code speak for “white supremacy”. DM