Democracy in crisis: America and South Africa’s parallel paths

In the maelstrom that passes for foreign policy in the Trump administration, its approach to South Africa — like its approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts — shines a spotlight on its racist first principles.

In February, the administration halted all U.S. aid to South Africa, falsely accusing the country of seizing agricultural property from Afrikaners — the white descendants of early Dutch settlers who are less than 10% of the population but own much of the country’s farmland — without compensation. Trump then invited Afrikaners to immigrate to America, a suggestion they received mainly with derision and mirth. Now, our secretary of state has expelled South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool for doing nothing more than stating the obvious: that U.S. policy amounted to “a white supremacist response to growing demographic diversity in the United States.”

The administration has pursued this course even though it is obviously self-defeating. For one thing, South Africa has the largest economy, most mineral resources, and most stable democracy on the entire continent. For another, it is finally in the process of emerging from 20 years of state capture — that is, moving beyond leadership that corruptly used state assets for personal gain. Instead of nurturing this, the U.S. is cutting off aid and commerce, all while perilously flirting with state capture itself. The only possible outcome will be to drive South Africa, for 35 years a determinably nonaligned nation, into the waiting arms of Europe, China, and Russia.

As an American lecturer at the University of Cape Town during the 1980s, I observed the increasing political tensions and domestic strife that characterized the last dying years of apartheid.

In those days, America had moral standing on the global stage, and South Africa was the pariah state. Having now witnessed the rise of MAGA, the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, and the coronation of Elon Musk, I cannot help but reflect on how much today’s United States resonates with apartheid South Africa, and there is much to learn from the comparison.

Of course, in South Africa, the Black population long outnumbered the white population; it was democracy that caught up with the demography. In America on the other hand, we are witnessing demography catching up with democracy. Both have in common a growing fear by a white electorate that it will soon become a permanent minority in national governance.

Should demographic trends continue, the United States will become a majority-minority country. Hawaii, New Mexico, California, Texas, Nevada, the District of Columbia, and all populated U.S. territories have majority-minority populations, while Maryland, Georgia, Florida, Arizona, New Jersey, Mississippi, and Louisiana are not far behind. In most of these states, children of color are already in the majority.

The needs, voices, and demands of the majority of the population, particularly the young generation, cannot so easily be ignored.

Both have in common a growing fear by a white electorate that it will soon become a permanent minority in national governance.

The core problem for the American right is that demography is destiny. Fully aware of this, the Republican Party’s reaction to America’s changing demography has been to exploit a deep core of racism — or more properly, racial fear — that characterizes much of the United States, just as it did in the American South after the Civil War and in apartheid South Africa. How else can we explain the systematic abandonment of virtually every core principle of conservatism: limited executive power, robust foreign engagement with European allies, fiscal restraint, belief in the rule of law, and constitutional originalism? What is left to defend?

GOP rhetoric now incorporates the tool kit of despots: mythology, dissembling, demonization, hysteria, and loyalty tests. All are familiar, and the result of the same calculation made by much of South Africa’s white population: that democracy itself was an existential threat, and therefore in defense of familiar prerogatives, anything was fair game.

America’s lurch to the right has a great deal in common with South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. During the last apartheid-era elections in 1987, with the country under increasing pressure to accept democracy, the dead-ender Conservative Party, led by A.P. Treurnicht (famously nicknamed Dr. No), became the official opposition, displacing the liberal Progressive Party. Prime Minister P.W. Botha, mainly concerned about competition from the growing right flank, intransigently refused to be influenced by international sanctions. In the clash between ideology and sanctions, ideology won every time. Yes, sanctions set the stage, but only a timely change in leadership altered the dynamic.

Botha, the “Groot Krokodil,” had a stroke and was replaced by F.W. de Klerk, who began a series of changes that culminated in his speech to Parliament on Feb. 2, 1990, in which he announced the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the African National Congress party. Even after negotiations began, on the cusp of democracy, a cherished Black leader, Chris Hani, was assassinated by a group of conspirators that included a Conservative Party member of Parliament. There was grave concern the military might flip and that violence on the right would disrupt the transition.

Demographic change is inexorable, and leadership matters.

Like apartheid-era South African whites, today’s Republicans will eventually need to choose between an accommodation with the coming majority or an even deeper dive into the rabbit hole of intransigence and voter suppression. Remaining in power will require ever more extreme measures, ever less democracy, and ever more reliance on disinformation, conspiracy theories, intimidation, and thought control. South Africa had the extraordinary good fortune that leaders emerged — most notably Mandela and de Klerk — who, notwithstanding the real threat of violence from their flanks, understood complexity, accommodation, common purpose, and the rule of law.

At this point, we are not so lucky.

Andrew Sillen earned his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. He is a visiting research scholar in the department of anthropology at Rutgers University and the author of “Kidnapped at Sea: The Civil War Voyage of David Henry White.”