When ‘merit’ means ‘people like us’

Those who challenge racial discrimination are branded racist, and those who defend it portray themselves as people to whom race does not matter.

by PROFESSOR STEVEN FRIEDMAN

FOR the leader of the Democratic Alliance, ‘merit appointment’ is hiring people who claim that ‘Bantu people, much like Arabs, are not democratic people’ and question whether protestors really were murdered by police at Sharpeville in 1960.

John Steenhuisen’s decision to appoint Roman Cabanac, a man whose racial biases include the comments quoted above, as his chief of staff in the agriculture ministry has prompted understandable outrage. But an aspect which has largely been ignored is the seeming disconnect between the appointment and one of the DA’s chief policy planks.

One of the DA’s favourite themes is to present itself as the champion of ‘merit’ and its opponents as race-obsessed bigots. The DA opposes racially based affirmative action and it insists repeatedly that it believes that everyone should be judged on their ability, not their race.

So, since it likes to present itself as just about the only voice of non-racialism in the room, why is its leader giving a senior role to a man who demeans black people and Arabs, particularly since it is widely agreed that Cabanac has no special qualifications or talents which suit him for the agriculture ministry?

No contradiction

The answer tells us much not only about the DA and its leader but about racial prejudice in much of the world.

There is no contradiction at all between the DA’s stress on ‘merit’ and hiring someone with Cabanac’s views in a senior position. In fact, the appointment tells us exactly what the DA means when it supports ‘merit’.

The DA never invokes ‘merit’ to complain that the abilities of black people are not recognised, although it would have ample grounds to do this. As I have written previously, thirty years of democracy has not ended the biases which assume that blacks are less competent than whites.

But, when it champions ‘merit,’ it always means that the abilities of white people – and, sometimes perhaps, people in the other racial minorities – are not recognised. And so its ‘non-racialism’ is not a plea for everyone to be treated the same. It is a call for white people be given what it considers their due.

The DA would no doubt insist that it champions whites because only they are on the wrong end of affirmative action. This ignores the damage which decades of discrimination and the attitudes which underpin it have done to black people. But to be wrong is not necessarily to be prejudiced; who is to say that the DA’s leaders do not genuinely believe that no-one should be favoured because of their race?

Cabanac’s appointment gives us the answer. Genuine non-racialists would not dream of appointing a person who expresses his prejudices. Liberals under apartheid might have been far less vigorously opposed to the system than they claimed but their organisations did not hire people in senior positions who stigmatised black people and questioned history which tells a story sympathetic to them.

So the appointment shows what the DA’s leader really thinks about race. Nor is it the only example of the DA’s racial mask slipping; there are many others, including a Tweet by one of its senior MPs complaining that black ANC MPs liked singing because they were no good at thinking.

To this we can add the other tell-tale piece of evidence – that black DA leaders almost always flee to other parties or to non-profit organisations just ahead of a posse trying to drive them out. It has been clear for years that there is no room in the party’s upper echelons for black people who think and act independently; black leaders seem to be welcome only if they act and speak in ways approved by its white leaders.

All this places the call for ‘merit’ in perspective. It suggests that the word is a fig-leaf which hides the view that white people are superior and that, if black people rise too high above their station, it is because their lack of ‘merit’ was ignored.

If you believe that, there is no problem with appointing to a senior post someone who denigrates black people and Arabs because they are saying what you think but also find it unwise to say.

Part of a pattern

Far more is at stake here than the prejudices of a particular political party in this country. The DA’s use of ‘merit’ to express a prejudice is part of a world-wide pattern.

There was a time when people who believed that whites were better than everyone else simply said so. So common were these prejudices that no-one who harboured them felt shy about expressing them. Some famous European political thinkers who championed freedom insisted in their writings that liberty was only for white people.

But, around half a century ago in the United States, people who believed that whites were superior changed tack.

They no longer claimed that racial bias was justified because black people were inferior. On the contrary, they insisted that they were firmly opposed to racism but that white people were now its victims. The perpetrators were people who believed in undoing discrimination against black people. Then, too, affirmative action was the target since white men claimed that they had not made it to medical school because undeserving black people were given their places.

This began a pattern which remains very much alive today. People who oppose racism and want to undo its effects are accused of being racists who discriminate against white people. It is not only measures which open jobs and university places to black people which are targets.

Demands that slave traders are no longer honoured in statues and memorials are branded attempts to deny white people their history. University programmes which examine how racial bias works in the law and society are labelled attempts to demonise white people. And it is common for black people who criticise racial biases of which they are victim to be accused of ‘playing the race card’.

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The same ploy is also used repeatedly to defend the Israeli state. Any criticism of its system of racial rule over Palestinians is branded an expression of anti-Jewish racism even when the critics are Jewish. Again, it is those who challenge racial discrimination who are branded racist, and those who defend it portray themselves as people to whom race does not matter.

And, while bigots once opposed free speech because it allowed voice for people they did not want to hear, they now loudly support the freedom to speak. But a quick check shows that this means the right of people like them to express prejudice, not anyone’s right to challenge it.

This background should make sense of Cabanac’s appointment. Several commentators have described it as an ‘error’ by Steenhuisen and have suggested that it may damage the coalition’s credibility. It is important to spell out that his real error was getting caught – acting in a way which shows the bias behind the party’s claimed non-racialism.

The nature of racial bigotry has changed and so we need now to look beyond the non-racial language which everyone uses to examine what people really mean when they endorse ‘merit’ and claim to be ‘colour-blind’. They may simply express in different words the biases Cabanac voiced more openly.

This article was first published on September 5, 2024 in Steven Friedman’s email column, Against The Tide.

Steven Friedman is a public commentator and an academic, currently employed as a Research Professor at the University of Johannesburg.

When ‘merit’ means ‘people like us’

Those who challenge racial discrimination are branded racist, and those who defend it portray themselves as people to whom race does not matter.

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