The Orania model and South Africa’s cosmopolitan liberals

Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons

This article was first published by Daily Friend on 5 September 2024

Non-racialism is a key liberal implication, but so is freedom of association and private property. There is no contradiction between these principles, even when the latter two are “seemingly” (but not really) exercised in contravention of the first. Nowhere is the sensibility of this discourse tested better than in the context of the private town Orania.

At the launch of the Free Market Foundation (FMF)’s Liberty First policy agenda for the post-2024 central government on 26 June 2024 a question was posed about the FMF’s federalisation proposals.

One of the recommendations in the agenda is for Parliament to adopt legislation in terms of section 235 of the Constitution to recognise the right to self-determination of self-defined cultural and linguistic communities.

I explained that in 30 years, Parliament has never adopted section 235 legislation, and that Pierre de Vos’s argument that this provision amounts to “smoke-and-mirrors” that should not be acted on was an incorrect and counter-constitutional notion.

I further went into how this provision does, potentially, allow something approximating federal self-determination within the South African polity. It sits outside of the Bill of Rights and is therefore not subject to limitation in terms of section 36 of the Constitution. Parliament, then, could grant section 235 communities authority greater than present-day municipalities and provinces.

I concluded that the Zulu nation on Ingonyama Trust land, and Orania in the Northern Cape, are good examples of communities that could be allowed to self-govern, helping lower the temperature of the contestation for the immense power and resources at the centre. As Donald L Horowitz argued during the transition, substantive federalism in culturally diverse societies is key to minimising conflict.

Liberal attacks on Orania

After the formal event, an attendee from the Solidarity Movement approached me.

You see, he thought liberals were opposed to Orania, and found it very interesting that the FMF, an avowedly liberal institution, would be in favour of Parliament adopting legislation that gives communities like Orania, which already exercise a large degree of de facto self-governance, de jure recognition. He believed this because, the day before the event, he saw another well-known liberal on television laying into Orania, spending much of the airtime available to talk about the Renaldo Gouws kerfuffle in instead attacking this community (unprovoked).

I and other liberals in attendance were taken aback by this revelation.

I have no interest in criticising this liberal by name and taking focus away from the underlying ideas at play. They are also not the only (classical) liberal I have encountered who regards Orania with contempt.

But what prompted me to write this column now is that this same liberal recently went on television again, this time during the Roman Cabanac kerfuffle, to attack Orania again, because Cabanac himself (rightly!) has expressed the sentiment that there should be many Oranias all throughout South Africa.

A preliminary note on Cabanac

This column is not about Roman Cabanac, but I think it is important to make a few observations to provide context.

Cabanac – like other conservatives – easily falls into the trap of shortsightedness, where the next conservative political victory is all that matters. This type of thinking has led him and others to lose sight of trends and the continuum between “moments” in politics. This is manifested, firstly, in his ostensible support for monarchy, and secondly, in the idea that “blacks are not liberal.”

Modern-day monarchists act as if they oppose democracy, but ultimately use democratic premises in their thinking. It does not occur to them that the chances of having a King Malema or a King Zuma are significantly greater than having a Queen Zille or a King Hazony. They think they can choose their poison, but that is a democratic notion.

In this sense, they are no different from that relatively large number of people in Africa who say they would “prefer” a “benevolent dictatorship” over democracy. Fortunately or unfortunately, this is not how monarchy or dictatorship works, and short-termism might well land South Africa in a far, far worse position than the one we are currently in.

The idea that “blacks are not liberal” is, also, obviously wrong.

On the whole, black South Africans do not vote for liberal parties, nor do they vote for liberal policies. To a liberal this is irrelevant, because the liberal point of departure is the individual, and there are individual black liberals (who I know Roman knows personally). The decision to speak in generalities is why Roman is necessarily and logically incorrect, for just one exception to his statement disproves it.

The reality is that democratic majorities (which are usually also demographic majorities) very rarely, if ever, vote liberal.

At no point during the previous dispensation, when South Africa had an almost exclusively white electorate, did a large portion of whites vote liberal. When blacks and coloureds, as an electoral minority, were still enfranchised in the Cape Province, they virtually exclusively voted liberal. Today, Afrikaners, a minority, also almost exclusively vote liberal.

Democratic majorities – white and black – vote to rent-seek, even if they tell pollsters that they do not believe in rent-seeking. This will either be a vote for nationalist protectionism or socialist redistributionism. Democratic minorities – white and black – on the other hand, tend to vote to protect themselves from this rent-seeking. This will usually either be a vote for conservative minority-interests or liberal constitutionalism.

Those in South Africa who support conservative minority interests vote for parties like the African Christian Democratic Party, the Freedom Front Plus, or else vote with their feet and go live in Orania.

Orania – by no means a cosmopolitan community – stands apart from the nationalist protectionism of Donald Trump’s Republican Party or Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. They are conservative localists.

And among the misguided views that Roman does have, the notion that South Africans should “build their own” Oranias is not one.

Liberal order’s rules of the game

Judged exclusively by their Twitter posts, influential people like Roman (and others, like Chris Becker) that I thought at one time were liberals (or “libertarians”) have since moved away from that thinking.

Notwithstanding the authoritarian ideals they might have since picked up, it seems that they have done this under what I think is the misapprehension that liberalism insists on a “thick” conception of the good life from society. This is however not the case, for liberalism is an ideology of bare-minimums.

In this context, the rules of the game in a liberal order, are, quite simply:

1. If you want things a certain way now, make it happen on your property;

2. If you want things a certain way outside your property, use persuasion and reason;

3. Certainly, do not use or threaten violence unless you are defending life, limb, and property from the violence of someone else; and

4. Respect the freedom of others who have come on to your property to opt-out and leave.

These rules cover the whole field of politics, and government in a free society is ultimately responsible for maintaining (only) these rules and their derivatives. We add things like “non-racialism” as liberal principles not because it is a stand-alone liberal value – it is, in fact, simply an expression of the individualism that forms the fabric of all liberal thought – but because, in South Africa’s context, government has a habit of opposing this individualism in particular.

Other than Rule 4 above, on your property you do not need to be an individualist or a non-racialist. As a legal subject (as opposed to government) you are entirely free, in a liberal society, to associate with those you want, on whatever basis you deem appropriate.

It is government, and only government, that is bound by the liberal imperative to be individualistic, because it is only government that is maintained by the obedience and resources of everyone.

Government does not get to discriminate or act arbitrarily towards its masters. Legal subjects can, however, associate and disassociate freely with one another provided the imperative of voluntariness (usually not applicable to government) is strictly maintained.

Cosmopolitan enlightenment

The likes of Cabanac and Becker can be forgiven for their misapprehension of liberalism, when South Africa’s liberals go on national television and implicitly represent liberalism as exactly this kind of think my-way-or-the-highway enlightenment.

Many people who happen to be liberal have a significant paternalistic streak. Those who identify as liberal tend to be highly educated and rightly believe, for instance, that policy for the future cannot simply be what we inherited from the past (which is arguably easier), but needs to be something we think about anew and apply our faculties of reasoning to.

The paternalistic cosmopolitans take our bedrock respect for reason too far. To them, “liberal” has become synonymous with “enlightened.” Anyone who deviates from their “data” or “reason”-based ideal is deemed to be backward in some or other way – potentially enough to nullify any freedom of association.

It is this thinking that rightly made the likes of FA Hayek shudder in fear when he warned that we need to allow society’s spontaneous order to form undisturbed while only (very) basic rules are maintained.

Liberalism per se has no paternalism – it is an anti-paternalism – despite the fact that some liberals themselves often find it difficult to put the brakes on their I-know-better sentiments.

These same cosmopolitan paternalists can travel around the world and observe cultural communities relatively untouched by Western influence and regard them as beautiful and interesting – while acknowledging, at least implicitly, that these communities are exclusive. Not closed, but exclusive, meaning that there are hoops – sometimes significant ones – that one must jump through before you may gain entry to the community.

This, South African liberals understand. Yet, when (some of them) look at Orania, they sigh with contempt.

I do not know whether the people who run Orania are racist. I think there are good reasons to think that they are not. Having a statuette of Hendrik Verwoerd does not, by itself, a racist make. (I have a poster of Mao Zedong, a portrait of Ayn Rand, and a map of the Boer Republics on the walls of my home office, after all.)

But whether or not they are racist is – and must be – irrelevant to the liberal qua liberal. Since the birth of liberalism, to Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, to the present, the only question the liberal asks is whether race plays a role in public policy, and if not, the liberal does not care – at least not with their liberal cap on.

The “enlightened” cosmopolitans are preoccupied with inclusion, however, and to the dismay of other liberals like me, they keep their liberal hats firmly on. Inclusivity has never been a liberal value.

During the past century – recently, in other words – people began to value inclusivity as a general social phenomenon (on the whole, a good thing). Some liberals, however, began to read that into their liberalism.

But one of liberalism’s great premises – implicit in the rules of the game – is exclusivity. Exclusivity does not mean everyone is kept out, but it does mean that one may keep others out of what one owns if one chooses. One may associate with some, and not with others, if one chooses.

Even the paternalistic cosmopolitans know this.

In the abstract, all liberals would pretend to be fine with Orania. When asked, “Should very conservative people be allowed to be very conservative in a liberal, free society?”, all liberals would answer, “Of course, provided they tolerate those who do not agree with their chosen lifestyle.”

This is the only liberal answer, and to my mind, all South African classical liberals would – in the abstract – give it.

Orania satisfies the criterion. In fact, it goes out of its way to satisfy this criterion. Spokespeople for Orania would be justified in simply telling sensationalistic factfinders to take a hike, but they belabour the point that Orania is all about creating a community for Afrikaners without imposing it on anyone who does not want to be part of their experiment.

Orania and its model

Liberals, as anyone else, can disagree with Orania’s value propositions and cultural concerns. I know I certainly do not agree with the entire Orania proposition, although with much of it I cannot find fault.

But the Orania model – which Cabanac seeks to see all over South Africa – necessitates liberal support.

It is not coercive toward its members. It is not coercive toward outsiders. And it is private property. These are the liberal ingredients that legitimise any communo-cultural enterprise. Everything that happens in Orania happens voluntarily and on private property.

Orania follows all the rules of liberal order, and are still vilified by some liberals. It should not surprise liberals on the whole, then, when people who value culture and diversity begin to regard liberalism as a catch-22 to be rejected.

The Orania model is the ultimate way to organise and live in a liberal society: on private property and in free association. Orania, the place, has its own rules, but every “Orania” will organise itself differently.

Liberals need not celebrate Orania in particular, nor do they have to like it. But for as long as Orania obeys the very simple rules of tolerance, liberals should always defend it, and should certainly never be seen attacking it.

Orania is not a rebellion against liberal constitutional order but perhaps one of its greatest manifestations. Without regard to Orania’s particular content and values, the Orania model is a global standard for harmony and freedom.

Provided communities who support it have no imperialistic ambitions, the Orania model is proof positive of how liberal order accommodates conservatism (and even progressive communalism). It is a feather in liberalism’s cap and one to be proudly championed as a liberal solution to tension in multicultural societies.

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The views expressed in the article are the author’s and are not necessarily shared by the members of the Foundation. This article may be republished without prior consent but with acknowledgement to the author.

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