Unapologetic anti-white racism marches in lockstep with SA’s economic decline

Three talented men, respected by their peers: David Unterhalter, Arrie Rautenbach, and André de Ruyter.

All three were in the headlines recently and illustrate a troubling phenomenon, a country moving from racial redress to racial retribution.

Like so many grand designs that produce squalid outcomes, this disaster comes from good intentions. The need for transformation.

Fortunately, there was a reluctant, but widespread, acceptance among whites that racial inclusion was not only a moral imperative but a matter of the country’s survival.

But it was also assumed that the best way to do this was to steadily enlarge the table to achieve a more equitable seating arrangement.

Also, white seats ceded would be based on ability, not cadre deployment and nepotism.

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In the private sector, the emphasis was on mentoring and replacing white expertise, as closely as possible, with black expertise.

In the public sector, it was more brutal.

In the civil service and state-owned entities (SOEs), early retirement and fake redundancies wiped out, virtually overnight, entire institutional memories.

The results are clear to see in a state sector that is overstaffed, over-paid and catastrophically dysfunctional.

Undeterred, the ANC continues to pass stricter and narrower racebased rules on employment.

The plight of the three men referred to earlier illustrates this drift to the crude racist reductionism that was the sole preserve of the ANC’s hated predecessor, the National Party.

De Ruyter is an anomaly in that he is one of a handful of Afrikaners appointed by the ANC to be in charge of anything.

In 2020, he was plucked by President Cyril Ramaphosa from the private sector to pull Eskom out of its death dive.

READ MORE: PIC ‘disappointed’ with Absa’s choice of new CEO

From day one at Eskom, he has been the target of a relentless campaign to oust him.

Part of it springs from his attempts to rid Eskom of corrupt ANC-deployed cadres.

This inevitably gave rise to accusations that he was a racist Boer who was replacing skilled blacks with his white pals.

Being exonerated by the Eskom board-appointed investigator hasn’t ended the campaign. Nor is it only a public sector problem.

Last week, it was the appointment of Rautenbach as CEO of Absa that got the race warriors angry.

The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) demanded a meeting to express its “downright disappointment”.

The Black Management Forum was particularly irked that “this appointment has been made by a predominantly black board”.

Finally, there is advocate Unterhalter whose undisputed brilliance as a legal scholar appears destined to be perpetually thwarted by the burden of not only being white, but Jewish.

This week, for the third time, he failed to be recommended to the president as a possible appointment to the Constitutional Court (ConCourt).

During his previous appearances before the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), the bigotry and stereotyping were palpable.

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Aside from the issues of race and gender, Unterhalter was smeared as a Zionist – by implication, a monstrous devourer of small Palestinian children – solely on the basis of having briefly been a member of the august South Africa Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD).

This kind of unapologetic anti-white racism marches in lockstep with our economic decline. When the pie is not growing, it’s impossible for social redistribution to be anything but punitive.

Those hungering for a slice are becoming more belligerent in elbowing others aside.

If there is any lesson to be learnt from our history, it’s that race is a crude tool and a blunt instrument.

Societies that rely on it to achieve social justice are quickly confronted with its limitations and corrosive side-effects.