Ever since the days of Bruno Mtolo — the ex-MK operative whose testimony in the Rivonia Treason Trial not only shattered the myth of unwavering liberation but also laid bare a strategy of betrayal — the apparatus of anti-ANC rhetoric has developed into a well-oiled machine.
This industry, steeped in colonial tactics and opportunistic profit, continues to thrive today. It is as old as colonialism itself — the monetisation of betrayal, the weaponisation of respectability and the repackaging of white supremacy as “rational critique”.
Mtolo’s betrayal during the Rivonia Trial was not merely an act of individual treachery; it was a strategic victory for Apartheid’s architects who understood that the fracturing of liberation movements required infiltrators and informants. Fast-forward six decades and the tactics have evolved, but the objective remains the same — to destabilise the march of transformation by laundering reactionary agendas through respectable channels.
It pays handsomely, this industry. Careers are made, reputations built and institutions such as think-tanks are established on the very premise of undermining the legacy of liberation. The modern incarnation of this playbook wears new faces and new guises, repackaged for a post-Apartheid era. Today, it thrives anew in the shrill theatrics of groups like AfriForum, the pseudo-workerism of Solidarity and the intellectually contorted narratives of commentators like William Gumede.
Their overarching mission is not to contribute constructively to a democratic debate, but rather to drown out South Africa’s noisy, vibrant democracy with a cacophony of distraction, disinformation and Apartheid nostalgia.
AfriForum and Solidarity, descendants of the fascist Ossewa Brandwag, have perfected the art of howling about “white genocide” and “property rights” to mask their true objective — the preservation of racial privilege. Their allies? Commentators like Gumede, who lend intellectual legitimacy to this charade by pathologising the ANC’s transformative agenda while absolving apartheid’s heirs of their complicity in perpetuating inequality.
Take Gumede’s recent Sunday Times broadside, “Irresponsible populist policies lead to abysmal outcomes”. Framed as a sober critique, the article is a masterclass in selective amnesia. It reduces the ANC’s land reform agenda — a constitutional imperative to redress centuries of colonial and Apartheid theft — to “populist recklessness”. It dismisses South Africa’s non-aligned foreign policy, rooted in anti-imperialism, human rights and Pan-Africanism, as “anti-US”. And it sidesteps the inconvenient truth that Apartheid’s beneficiaries remain overwhelmingly privileged in a nation where Black poverty still wears the face of deliberate underdevelopment.
AfriForum and Solidarity, descendants of the fascist Ossewa Brandwag, have perfected the art of howling about 'white genocide' and 'property rights' to mask their true objective — the preservation of racial privilege.
Gumede’s arguments are not new. They echo the colonial logic that framed Mandela as a terrorist, the Freedom Charter as a communist plot and Black self-determination as inherently “irrational”. When he dismisses affirmative action and BEE as the “marginalisation of minorities”, he promotes the Apartheid-era myth that equality for Black people constitutes oppression for Whites. When he bats an eyelid to the “white genocide” propaganda — a lie debunked by recent official SAPS crime statistics — he fuels the racist trope that Black governance is inherently chaotic and violent.
What makes Gumede’s intervention so insidious is its veneer of reasonableness. Unlike AfriForum’s cartoonish racism or Solidarity’s faux-workerism, his rhetoric is calibrated to appeal to liberal sensibilities. He speaks of “accountability” and “pragmatism” while erasing context — the ANC’s policies are not arbitrary, but constitutional obligations to dismantle Apartheid’s legacy, as stated in its pre-amble.
Land reform, economic redress and a foreign policy sceptical of Western hegemony are not “populist” indulgences — they are the baseline demands of justice in a nation still gasping for air after 350 years of colonial suffocation.
This is the banal face of modern reaction — the columnist who conflates redress with revenge, the think-tank that rebrands White anxiety as “civil rights activism”, and the union that fights not for workers, but for the racial hierarchy that Apartheid built. Their success lies in their ability to distort reality. They lament “state failure” while opposing every effort to transform that state. They decry crime rates but ignore how poverty and inequality — direct legacies of Apartheid socio-economic engineering — feed desperation. They demand “non-racialism” while resisting the redistribution of land, wealth and power that would make it possible.
Let us be clear, the ANC is not beyond critique. Its missteps are real, its internal contradictions glaring and its pace of delivery often perceived as glacial. But to conflate these challenges with the legitimacy of its transformative project is to surrender to the anti-liberation playbook. Our policies are not perfect either, but they are necessary.
Land reform is not “theft” — it is restitution. Affirmative action is not “racism” — it is redress. A foreign policy that challenges Western double standards is not “irresponsible” — it is the bare minimum of sovereignty.
To those who argue that the we must “move past apartheid”, we ask: How do you move past a system whose economic architecture still stands? When 72% of South Africa’s farmland remains in white hands, when Black households earn six times less than White ones and when the World Bank ranks us the world’s most unequal society? Transformation is not a choice — it is an existential imperative.
Bertolt Brecht once wrote that “the bitch that bore [fascism] is in heat”. In South Africa, her pups wear many disguises — the human rights activist quoting “property rights” to defend stolen land, the columnist pathologising Black-led governance, the unionist screaming “white genocide” while hoarding apartheid’s spoils. Their bark is loud, but their bite is lethal. To silence them, we must confront not just their lies, but the rotten industry that feeds them — an industry built on colonial logic, sustained by White fear and funded by those who profit from a South Africa forever in chains to its past.
Comrade Joel Netshitenzhe, an ANC veteran, once quipped that ours is a “noisy democracy”. He was right — but what he perhaps understated is how much of this noise is not grassroots dissent, but a calculated campaign. It is the hum of a well-oiled machine, funded by apartheid’s beneficiaries and operated by their modern-day proxies.
Our greatest crime, in the eyes of our critics, is not failure — it is our refusal to surrender. For 30 years, we have dared to govern as if a free, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and equitable South Africa is possible. That noise you hear? It’s not chaos. It’s the sound of a nation fighting for its soul.
* Ntuli is ANC Chief Whip
For opinion and analysis consideration, email Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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