THE POLITICAL DELUSIONS OF LIBERALISM, THE DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE, AND THE EMPLOYMENT EQUITY BILL STORM IN A HIGH TEA CUP Songezo Zibi, a senior associate editor at the Financial Mail, made the following key observations in an article - DA faces a crossroads, but fears losing its historical self - published in the Business Day newspaper of 12 November 2013@ about the DAs about-turn in its support then rejection of the Employment Equity Amendment Bill: * The DAs present position is that it no longer supports the bill because it is premised on racial coercion. It also feels the bill would be a departure from its core liberal principles. * It may not admit it, but Helen Zilles party is at a crossroads. It faces a choice between dogmatically sticking to its ahistorical, willfully ignorant approach to equality or a recalibration of its views to make a braver analysis of SAs socioeconomic asymmetries. * It seems frightened of losing its historical self and adopting a new persona and ethos that can produce a comfortable, negotiated position with which its future supporters can live. While there is much merit in these observations I believe that the suggestion that the DA could make a braver analysis of SAs socio economic asymmetries, or have a historical self which it is frightened of losing, are questionable expectations from its brand of liberalism. The political tradition of liberalism asserts that human beings are by nature solitary, aggrandizing individuals and that, consequently, the preferred form of social and political relationships with others, including the state as the organized expression of political society, is solely contractual. It therefore apotheosises the individual, and maintains that the self alone is the irreducible unit and concrete reality on which all political societies and their governments are organised - and that the promotion and protection of the individual and his interests, particularly as they relate to property, are the primary objects of all public policy. In diametrical contrast, a braver analysis of SAs socio economic asymmetries would thus call for an analysis which should apotheosise those historically disadvantaged by Apartheid, as an irreducible political unit/group for whom service delivery and corrective action should be prioritised, and consequently political society be organised as an object of government policy until the playing fields have been equitably distributed, adequately resourced, and not only merely leveled. Liberalism in general, and the DA brand in particular, is not theoretically capable of such an analysis, let alone policy objects, and any attempt at such analysis would have to discard the very fundamental principle of the political apotheosis of the individual as an irreducible unit around which political societies should be organised or governed. It this which is one of the core liberal principles that the DA feels it would depart from in the event of it supporting the Employment Equity Amendment Bill, and might result in it losing its historical self. Ultimately it boils down to liberalisms obsession with property and autonomy which, within the DA brand, firstly involves the propertied interests of its very previously advantaged business, landowner, and middle class constituencies as individuals, allegedly mobilized around some arcane free-market and spectral equal opportunity political myth which it pontificates as the answer for future South Africa. So take the DA explanations about its about-turn on the Employment Equity Amendment Bill with a mountain of salt as we approach the 2014 elections, and bear in mind the following words from TERRY EAGLETON in his book AFTER THEORY(2003) : For conservatives, there is that in the world which cannot be tampered with, known as property. For radicals, too, there is that which is beyond our meddling, known as the autonomy of others. It is this which grounds our notions of objectivity. Liberals, characteristically, back both horses, believing in both property and autonomy.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:54:08 +0000
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