The Common Sense’s Diary

South Africa’s unity government pulled off a successful G20 summit. The summit was efficiently arranged and everything worked as it should. The routes along which summit dignitaries were driven had been spruced up enough to seem first world. The flying of South African fighter jets and helicopter gunships over the venue created the impression of a serious country. The meeting was well chaired by Mr Ramaphosa and its declaration (these things are always a virtue signal and not taken very seriously, especially by the people who signed it) was fine for such occasions.

If you want some corroboration for the insincere virtue signalling nature of big global summits just think of this. Imagine that 300 children had been kidnapped from a school in the United Kingdom, or Germany, or Canada, and that these were being held hostage by Islamist terrorists and their bandit brethren, and that this sort of thing happened all the time. What would Keir Starmer or Friedrich Merz or Mark Carney have said and done? It would have been the single biggest news story in the world, the single biggest political issue in their Parliaments, and all three leaders would have activated resources beyond all imagination to free the children. Well, shortly before the G20 300 children were kidnapped in Nigeria from a Catholic school and no one at the G20 said anything about it, for the reason that woke Westerners don’t actually care about what happens in Africa.

The same, it appears, is true for some in the American administration and their attachment to the Afrikaners. Hardliners who see the Republicans on the ropes in elections that now pit the American heartland against its woke-left cities see the Afrikaners as a very useful asset in those elections. By casting the Afrikaners as a besieged Christian agrarian community on the brink of being overrun by the communist horde, with only the Trump administration fighting to stop that, the optics work in domestic American politics. The Afrikaners are the subject of hostile South African government policy, property rights are under threat, and farmers are more likely to be attacked in their homes or businesses than is the case for the balance of the South African population. It would be a foolish thing to say they suffer no danger in South Africa or that their future is assured. But they are also thriving in many respects, well integrated into the country, and widely respected across the racial and ethnic spectrum. Their best bet is to find common ground with South Africa’s centre-right black Christian majority, with whom they share almost all important values. Betting on Trump will only work as long as Afrikaners remain a useful asset to the right of America’s internal politics. When that changes they will be cast aside and abandoned. Doubt that? Go back to the imagery of the Americans fleeing from Saigon, leaving their brave South Vietnamese allies to be overrun by a literal communist horde. Or more recently to the American flight from Afghanistan, abandoning its allies (and some of its own citizens) to an equally perilous fate.

The efficient running of the G20 raises a curious question: why only for events such as a world cup or global summit does the government try so hard to put on a world-class show? If they did it all the time the ANC would not have lost an election.

The Boks scrumming against Ireland was one of the greatest things to have watched in Test rugby. Under Rassie they’ve been world class all the time. Again, the same issue comes up: South Africa puts up such a show of world class excellence in a sport that is ultimately regulated by the state through the sports minister. Why not just do that with everything all the time?

In the gym a top businessman remarked that for all the hype about South Africa’s credit ratings upgrade and the interest cut last week their firm (financial services) is still not seeing much real upward movement in the South African economy. That’s of course correct, the jobs and growth numbers show that. But households are spending and are also not backsliding rapidly, which might easily have happened were the GNU not formed. Appreciating South Africa depends a lot on seeing the relative order of things.

Polling released last week by the Social Research Foundation is the most heartening thing to read for anyone depressed about South Africa’s prospects. It shows a country broadly united behind the ANC and the DA and open to all the reforms needed to make South Africa great.