MOELETSI MBEKI: The end of the age of nationalism

Every nation has years that are etched in its memory and marked with indelible ink; in this SA is no exception. The year 1994 will forever be remembered as the year that ushered in democracy, and thus liberated SA from the strictures of Afrikaner nationalism that went under the collective name of apartheid.

The year 2021 was unique because it was one South Africans want to forget. In 2021 we had a glimpse over the edge of the abyss — and we did not like what we saw. 

After the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma on July 7, thousands of South Africans went on the rampage in the country’s two major provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, leaving in their wake hundreds dead and billions of rand worth of properties destroyed.

The year 2021 is when South Africans realised that they have no government. The year showed that the illusion that provided South Africans with the comfort that the ANC will govern the country forever, or at least for a very long time, was shattered.

During the whole of the 20th century, SA politics was dominated by nationalism. It was dominated by the African nationalism of the ANC, which was founded in 1912. It was dominated by the Afrikaner nationalism of the National Party (NP), founded in 1914.

In 2021 the certainty provided by nationalist politics ended abruptly when the ANC failed to achieve 50% of the national electorate in the local government elections held in November. After more than 100 years of politics of nationalism SA now faces a new, uncertain future. What will replace nationalism?

Nationalism is a social and political movement that is driven by a deep sense of grievance. Population groups become aggrieved when they feel a strong sense of exclusion from enjoying the political, social and economic benefits in a given society.

In the case of SA, we have two schools of nationalism — Afrikaner nationalism and African nationalism — both of which have been driven by groups aggrieved for being excluded by the British from the benefits created by British colonialism.

Afrikaner nationalists were aggrieved because the British excluded them from the gold and diamond industry and from finance. African nationalists were aggrieved because they were excluded from economic ownership in general and from political power.

Nationalists therefore do not fight to change the socioeconomic structure of the colonial system. They fight to be included in it. Both the Afrikaner nationalists and the African nationalists fought to be included in the British-created colonial economic system.  

This explains why the archaic SA economic system of exporting raw minerals and agricultural products established by the British after the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 remains intact.

What is the difference between Afrikaner nationalism and African nationalism? Afrikaner nationalism was a movement of a property-owning elite that owned most of the land in SA.  African nationalism was a movement of a professional elite that did not own property.

Guaranteed downfall

Afrikaner nationalists used control of the state from 1910 to make their properties profitable. To achieve this, they had to develop the huge communication and transportation infrastructure and state-owned enterprises SA still has. 

This was done partly by taxing mining profits, but most importantly by a ruthless suppression and exploitation of black labour. This is what ensured the longevity of Afrikaner rule, but it also guaranteed its downfall in 1994 once black resistance could no longer be suppressed. 

African nationalism was a coalition of professionals, traders, religious leaders, organised labour and civil society who took control of the state from Afrikaner nationalists in 1994. The economic system, which was initially developed by the British and added to by the Afrikaner nationalists but continued to be driven by mineral and agricultural exports, remained in place.

As African nationalists were not property owners, they were not motivated to further develop the productive infrastructure of SA. Their main grievance was that they had been excluded from attaining levels of consumption of the whites. The ANC government therefore used its control of the state to tax the rest of the economy, to raise the consumption of the black middle and upper classes to that of the white middle and upper classes.  It also promoted consumption of the black underclass, on whom it depended for re-election, through social welfare.

An important difference between Afrikaner nationalists and African nationalists was that Afrikaner nationalists had a vested interest in a growing economy because that made their private property grow and be profitable. It did not apply in the case of African nationalists as they did not own private property. African nationalists were therefore more incentivised to import cheap consumption goods than to produce domestically.

This explains the deindustrialisation of SA since 1994. It also explains why African nationalism met the same fate as Afrikaner nationalism. Afrikaner nationalism could not sustain repression; African nationalism cannot sustain consumption without investment in production.

• Mbeki is chair of the SA Institute of International Affairs.