In the absence of effective solutions to South Africa’s escalating economic and social crises, dangerous delusions and destructive fantasies are flourishing. Having returned to executive power, US President Donald Trump recently provided renewed vitality to the paranoia of right-wing populists while validating the perverse anxieties of white nationalists. On February 3, Trump threatened to freeze funding to South Africa, claiming that its government is “confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY.”

Sadly but unsurprisingly, Trump was, of course, referring to white South Africans, specifically the white Afrikaans community. The tweet was soon followed by the signing and issuing of an executive order by the White House on February 7. Now the US government aims to “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”

President Trump’s assertions and executive order came after the (needlessly) controversial reaction to the adoption by the South African government of the Expropriation Act. Far from a radical reformation of land policy or a threat to the livelihoods of white property owners, the Act is a procedural piece of legislation that lays out the context and criteria through which the government may take private property, either in the public interest or for public purpose. Considering the factors outlined for calculating “just and equitable compensation,” legal commentators have argued that “whilst it may be possible to arrive at nil compensation, it would only be in extremely rare circumstances that would enable nil compensation.” 

But the mundane reality of the amendments to the Expropriation Act is irrelevant to political opportunists. Trump’s statement reverberated as a rallying cry, summoning right-wing pundits, alt-right influencers, and white nationalist organizations to echo myths of systematic white persecution by a black majority government. Predictably, the debunked conspiracy of white genocide has been given new life, once again tainting mainstream discourse. In response to a statement by South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, which aimed to clarify the function of the Expropriation Act, tech-billionaire and Iron Man wannabe Elon Musk tweeted, “Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?” 

Donald Trump’s executive order, Elon Musk’s championing of white nationalism, the jubilee of the global right win,g and the hysterical domestic debates unfolding in South Africa around land reform all point to the potent power and insidious function of race as an ideological construction under capitalism.

In South Africa and around the world, neoliberal capitalism is in a state of calamity and crisis. Like their counterparts in the US Democratic Party, the African National Congress lacks the political will, ideological orientation, and material interest to depart from a neoliberal framework. It is in this vacuum that racial and ethnic chauvinism, often combined with nationalist populism, can thrive. 

The Afrikaner nationalism of organizations such as AfriForum and the right-wing populism of Trump or Musk work in cohesion to cloak the unsustainable and exploitative property relations that have made all of our lives worse. In order to retain the fruits of colonial plunder, defend the tyranny of private property, protect the power of our capitalist overlords, and undermine the possibility of reform or revolt, the white right-wing must invent myths that fuel fear, nourish resentment, deepen divisions, and incite conflict. 

Bewildering as it may seem to those living in South Africa, the narrative that claims white people are helpless victims of oppressive racial discrimination by a black government craving revenge is not entirely marginal. In high school, university, and as an adult, I have occasionally encountered white people who sincerely suspect they are being primed for or will eventually be victims of violent, state-sanctioned discrimination. 

One need not waste too much time debunking the myth of white persecution in post-apartheid South Africa. The empirical evidence is abundant and clear. Relative to the vast majority of the black population, most white citizens have better educational opportunities and outcomes, are more likely to find employment and earn higher wages, are less likely to endure poverty or food insecurity, and generally live in neighborhoods that enjoy better service delivery and safety from crime. This does not mean that the lives of white citizens are untouched by suffering and struggle; whether it be the rising cost of living, financial precarity, dysfunctional local governments, or violent crime. But these obstacles are not thrown upon white South Africans specifically because they are classified as white; they are symptoms of an increasingly incapacitated state run by kleptocrats who manage a debilitating capitalist economy. 

So if most of the white population experiences a significantly higher standard of socioeconomic well-being (relative to the black majority, including Coloureds and Indians), why are some minds and hearts so firmly gripped by the myth of their persecution? Here, we can gain insight from French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, who defined ideology as “representing the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” With this definition of ideology, one is then compelled to ask, “What are the imaginary relationships, and what are the real conditions of existence?”

Strange as it may seem, in a time where the idea of race appears as real and all-enveloping as the air we breathe, we must remember that white South Africans were not always white. They were once Dutch sailors, German merchants, Swedish priests, unskilled French laborers, and British soldiers. But in the destructive process of primitive accumulation (dispossession of land and livestock or the coercive herding of Africans into exploitative wage or slave labor), both by the imperial powers of Europe and the titans of mercantile capitalism (e.g., the Dutch East India Company), European settlers would have to become white to justify the dispossession, hyper-exploitation, and political domination of the native African population.   

Racism, as the action of discrimination based on perceived social difference, preceded the ideological construction of race in South Africa. Race then arises and mutates as an ideology functioning to legitimate and rationalize the emerging property relations of capitalism. As historian Barbara Fields reminds us, and one sees this reflected in the Afrikaner nationalism of the apartheid regime, the ideology of race functions to explain away and resolve the contradiction between the liberty of some and the subjugation of others. If Africans are indeed mentally inferior, morally immature, and culturally backward, then their economic exploitation and exclusion from political decision-making is not only justified but necessary.

Systemic racism, and discrimination enacted through policy and legislation, preceded the apartheid regime by many decades. An infamous example would be the 1913 Natives Land Act, which severely restricted black land ownership, reserving 93% of land for the white minority of the population. Reeling from the debilitating shockwaves of industrialization, urbanization, world war, and global economic crisis, a class alliance was gradually formed in the 1930s as an attempt to “save the volk” by forging a monopoly capitalism that would uplift the Afrikaner into a new age of prosperity. Apartheid, and the Afrikaner nationalism, which was the engine of its moral and political justification, was an answer to the evolving character of capitalism in South Africa and abroad. 

Shackling millions of Africans into brutal exploitation and political marginality proved to be unsustainable. Economic developments and political forces, domestic and international, collided to bring about the end of state-enforced racial segregation and political oppression. Yet, in the crucible of apartheid’s death, South Africa’s own version of neoliberalism was forged, and capitalism endured. 

As noted by author Dan O’Meara in his book Volkskapitalisme:

If ideologies arise out of everyday experience and mirror and guide such experience in both a partially adequate yet misrepresented way, they do not adequately represent the conditions of existence of such everyday experience. Here is the source of the illusory character of ideology.

Race, and the right-wing populism that cultivates the myth of white persecution, draw vitality from a shallow or at times totally absent perception and understanding of the underlying conditions that constitute everyday experience in post-apartheid South Africa, in both our past and present.  

An important factor in determining a person’s chances of enjoying socio-economic well-being under capitalism is the resources they inherit, such as property, wealth, and networks. A salient feature of South Africa’s democratic government has been its unwavering commitment to the class project of neoliberalism. British-American academic David Harvey defined this project as aiming to “restore the conditions of capital accumulation and re-establish the power of economic elites.” For the post-apartheid government, neoliberalism is enforced through maintaining austerity measures, financial deregulation, trade liberalization, regressive taxation, commercialization of public services, export-led growth, and most recently, the creeping privatization of public utilities. 

In the wake of neoliberalism’s crusade, the economic advantages most white South Africans had accrued over decades were compounded by a government that avoided wealth redistribution, land or urban housing reform, extensive welfare, progressive taxation of the rich, or public investment in industrial economic development. Terrorized by a neoliberal state and sacrificed to the ravenous process of capital accumulation, the black working class (and even the emergent, precarious black middle class) has been deeply betrayed. And their righteous indignation has become increasingly difficult to contain or pacify. 

Calls for radical land reform, nationalization or wealth redistribution, and the embrace of populist parties who indulge in irresponsible racist and chauvinist rhetoric, express not only a deep dissatisfaction with the post-apartheid order but a yearning for an alternative to destitution and powerlessness. Criticisms of “whiteness” or white privilege (as politically and analytically messy as they sometimes can be) are a testament to the widespread sense that the majority of black people are still treated (by state and economy) as second-class citizens. 

Organizations such as AfriForum, the Institute for Race Relations, and political parties such as the Democratic Alliance or Freedom Front Plus, indulge in political messaging that frames the despair of black people or their demands for transformative change, as either an attack on white livelihoods or an assortment of destabilizing, utopian demands that will scare off private investment and upset the free market. Or there is a complete refusal to acknowledge the imprint of history in the present and the structures blocking the possibility of economic transformation. These white lobbying groups and political parties fail to see that there can be no bootstraps to pull up if one has no shoes. And it is no coincidence that they advance economically conservative policies. 

For decades the majority of white South Africans were indoctrinated to believe in their immutable difference and inherent superiority. Whether preached in the pulpit, disseminated through state-controlled media, or infused into school curriculums, the ideology of race was as pervasive as it was potent. 

But beyond state indoctrination, the ideology of race reflected the material conditions, political configuration, and social relations of apartheid. In the daily experience of apartheid, white South Africans were most likely to only encounter and interact with black people as instruments to sustain their material comforts or domestic luxuries. In every sphere of daily life, white South Africans bore witness to the dehumanization of black people, framed as normal and necessary. Most of what was understood about the experience of being black under apartheid was conveyed and digested through racist viewpoints provided by family, friends, teachers, employers, or the state. 

Precisely because South Africa’s government has done little to unravel the exploitative property relations and processes of capital accumulation that trap most black people into either poverty, unemployment, or labor precarity, the ideological outlook of white citizens faces little challenge. Accentuating this malaise is the notion that the eradication of poverty, unemployment, and inequality is a zero-sum game. This illusion has some of its roots in the doctrine of Swart Gevaar (Afrikaans for “black danger”). It was a propaganda term with a long history, designed and deployed by Afrikaner nationalists as an election strategy to convince white South Africans that the political inclusion of black people into decision-making would spell the end of white civilization. 

Intoxicated by the ideology of race and some unable to cope with no longer existing in an elevated social, political, and economic status, many white South Africans, both reactionary and liberal, struggle to accept that building a country that is safe, socially cohesive and prosperous for all who live in it, will require a profound change to the structure of the economy. This process will partly entail the loss of their economic advantages but also the privileges and status of the growing black elite.

In an interview recorded by the BBC before his detention, anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko spoke of what he envisioned South Africa beyond white supremacist rule would look like, proposing that “In our country there shall be no minority, there shall be no majority, there shall just be people…it will be a completely non-racial egalitarian society.” This is not the liberal moralist non-racialism that seeks to evade the issue of discrimination by pointing to race as a social construction, but a non-racialism founded in recognizing the intimate, functional relationship between racism, the ideology of race, and economic exploitation. 

Elaborating on whether the future of South Africa is socialist, Biko prophetically remarked: 

In South Africa there is such an ill-distribution of wealth that any form of political freedom which does not touch on the proper distribution of wealth will be meaningless…if we have a mere change of face in those in governing positions, what is likely to happen is that black people will continue to be poor and you will get a few blacks filtering into the so-called bourgeoisie, and our society will be run almost as of yesterday.  

Making South Africa a prosperous, peaceful, and safe country for all those within it is not about seeking retribution against white people. Capitalists, black or white, will relentlessly pursue profits and accumulation at the expense of people, regardless of their racial classification. 

To free ourselves from the archaic and divisive ideology of race, and to combat racism, the underlying material conditions which breathe life into these mystifications must be transformed. Practically speaking, a program must be built, backed by a mass of millions, to challenge the power of capital and the political elites who orchestrate its domination. If South Africa remains entangled in a neoliberal project, then what awaits us are the dangerous delusions and destructive fantasies of reactionaries that are swarming the world.