Crisis and solution
The two most important reasons why South Africa provides a glimpse of the future
“If you want to know what the future of Western Europe will look like, look at what is happening in South Africa.” This was the introductory remarks to a recent series of articles in the popular Hungarian newspaper Demokrata. The series was about the deterioration of South Africa and the initiatives of the Afrikaner people to ensure a future for ourselves through the variety of institutions that form part of the Solidarity Movement. Demokrata’s conclusion was not a lone voice in the wilderness. The notion that South Africa ought to be looked at to get a glimpse of the future has become a widely held opinion in mainstream conservative circles in Europe and America.
In our international liaison efforts, we have started to notice that it is not necessary for us to tell people that South Africa should be considered to be ahead of the curve, rather than behind. This is because we increasingly find that people have already come to this conclusion. There are however not just one, but two important reasons why South Africa is ahead of the curve.
The first and the most obvious is that South Africa is deteriorating. This deterioration is happening largely as a result of destructive policy ideas that have been implemented for several decades – and these are the same policy ideas that much of the Western world is flirting with. These policy ideas mostly result from the obsessive pursuit of strengthening the government’s power to solve societal issues. Ironically, this pursuit is combined with the government’s continued loss of capacity to implement its proposed solutions. We see this in South Africa with policy ideas such as empowering the government to confiscate private property without compensation, the attempted government takeover of private healthcare, the targeting of functional schools where local communities have more de facto authority than the government, and a myriad of race laws aimed at structuring every sphere of society according to racial categories and ensuring that skin colour is the most important factor in determining how a person ought to be treated.
The second reason why South Africa is ahead of the curve in many ways is arguably more important than the first. This relates to the attempts of the Afrikaner community to build a sustainable future while being faced with these problems. As explained during my recent speech at the NatCon 4 conference in Washington DC, we are doing this through a network of institutions known as the Solidarity Movement, and under the slogan “ons sal self” (which could be translated as “we will do it ourselves”). Although we don’t describe it as such, this network of institutions has been described by some as the de facto opposition in South Africa, and also as a de facto government for the Afrikaner people. This is because these institutions have tremendous capacity to influence the balance of forces in South Africa, and also because they cover a large variety of spheres necessary for a nation to flourish. In the process we are fulfilling a variety of responsibilities typically regarded as the role of the government. For the sake of brevity, I will only mention some examples:
· Solidarity focusses on employment and workers’ rights, especially with regard to discrimination in the workplace.
· AfriForum focusses on community organising, and safety and security within these communities (supported by private security firms).
· The Solidarity Helping Hand focusses on community upliftment through initiatives to support impoverished communities and the provision of bursaries for underprivileged young people to study.
· The Federation of Afrikaans cultural organisations (in Afrikaans abbreviated as the FAK) is a network of cultural organisations aimed at protecting and promoting the Afrikaans language and Afrikaner culture.
· The Support Centre for Schools works to support Afrikaans schools and combat destructive policy ideas with regard to education.
· The Orania Development Company is actively involved with the creation of infrastructure to accelerate the growth of the Afrikaner cultural community known as Orania. The aim is to develop Orania from a town currently inhabited by several thousand people into a fully-fledged Afrikaner city.
· Akademia is a private institution of higher learning where Afrikaans students can do tertiary studies in their own language, and where education is approached from a classical Christian perspective.
· Sol-Tech is a technical college providing artisan training for young Afrikaans-speaking people.
· Maroela Media is the largest online Afrikaans news website.
In our conversations with some American friends, we sometimes find that an explanation of the work of the Solidarity Movement is responded to with the remark that “it will never work here”. As I mentioned in an earlier piece here on Substack, every country and every nation is in a unique situation and it would be irresponsible to attempt to merely copy solutions that have worked in one place and apply them to another. Having said this, there are some universal truths, based on which we can reach some conclusions as to whether an idea might work or not. When attempting to come to such conclusions, it’s best to ground them in a combination of common sense and experience.
And two common-sense conclusion that have been proven everywhere in the world – especially in the western world – is firstly that more government control to fix societal issues is almost always a bad idea (or an unsustainable idea at best), and secondly, that more community involvement is almost always a good idea.
People are quick to conclude that many of the problems the West is facing today are the result of government overreach – and rightly so. However, this ought to be only one part of the two-sided conclusion. The other side of the coin is that the West has become characterised by the withdrawal of communities and the erosion of community life under the banner of statist-individualism – where our moral frame of reference is no longer defined by our responsibilities toward our communities, but by the individual rights with regard to which we demand protection by the state. The vicious circle that flows from this is that demanding more state protection necessarily implies strengthening the state, and strengthening the state usually leads to more demands for protection… by the state.
Nowhere is this as evident as in the USA. Even though America has had some individualistic influence since its founding, historically the USA has been especially characterised by a strong sense of communal identity and active community involvement. And when talking about active community involvement, the central activity is the building and maintaining of community institutions. Community institutions have however been sacrificed on the altar of statist-individualism. And it is as a result of the disengagement from our communities flowing from this that we find ourselves increasingly vulnerable against the powerful state.
This is why we are correct in saying that the problems of the modern West have to do with government overreach… but that is only half-correct. The lesser regretted but more important component of the problem is the fact of individual disengagement from the community.
So, in a sense, South Africa is ahead of the curve, because we can see the consequences of government overreach in a very tangible way. But also, the Afrikaner people in South Africa are ahead of the curve in a very important way because we are actively working on returning to one of the most important truths on which Western civilization was built – the building and strengthening of institutions that are not dependent on the state to flourish, but on the community.
"Community is someone else's job" is a too common attitude, I'm afraid. Or thinking it's a good idea, but not enough to give time and/or money to it.
Excellent article. Good for the Afrikaner people. They can show us the way.