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Where do the FF Plus votes come from … and where are they going?

THE FREEDOM FRONT PLUS showed the second-highest growth of all the parties in the 2019 general election. Its number of votes rose from 165 000 to 414 000, its share of the vote from 0,9% to 2,38% and its representation in the National Assembly from four seats to ten.

Only the EFF showed bigger growth. That in itself is of course the sad story of this election – the political forces are centrifugal rather than centripetal, and the parties perceived by most people as the furthest left and the furthest right in parliament showed the most growth.

If you wonder why, it’s no use asking the DA – which bled many of those votes – about the reasons. If they knew, they would have prevented the losses. You need to go to the people who gained the votes, namely the FF Plus itself.

This is an important exercise because many outside Afrikaner ranks, as well as some less traditionalist Afrikaners, struggle to understand how anyone can see the FF Plus as an option for the future.

The phenomenon of people who shifted from the DA to the FF Plus is largely, though of course not exclusively, limited to white Afrikaans speakers, commonly known as Afrikaners. It was basically a case of Afrikaner infighting, which is a bit like Jewish infighting – it’s intense, and it’s internal.

In an interview with the top-class profile writer Hanlie Retief in Rapport, the leader of the FF Plus, Dr Pieter Groenewald, gave a revealing version of his perceptions of the election. While there is little reference to FF Plus policies, much is made of the mistakes of the DA, notably because they assumed their Afrikaner voters were a given. Groenewald also refers to a number of ‘intercept tries’ his party scored – own goals where the DA, through rash, hasty decisions and plain political stupidity, played right into the hands of the FF Plus.

He says whites, and specifically Afrikaners, should be proud of what they are and shouldn’t be discriminated against as minorities, and then he makes the following statement: ‘The rainbow nation is dead.’

Implicit in this is the problematic nature of the rise of the FF Plus, because he doesn’t outline any alternative. In any case, that’s rich coming from him, since it’s not as if the FF Plus has at any point lived up to the ideal of the rainbow nation – in this election, 22 of the 23 representatives they sent to parliament and the provincial legislatures were white.

The sole exception is the former Western Cape premier Peter Marais. Say no more. One can read a full account of everything he got up to the last time he was in a position of power in Prof. Johan C. Moll’s exhaustive study Kaapstad se “Streetgate”: Politieke maneuvers en die Peter Marais-debakel (1999–2002) (Cape Town’s ‘Streetgate’: Political manoeuvres and the Peter Marais debacle), published in book form by the University of the Free State.

For Pieter Groenewald to pronounce on the rainbow nation is like that rascal among ANC politicians Panyaza Lesufi (Gauteng MEC for education, if you’ve had the good fortune of being unaware of his existence up to now) pronouncing on Afrikaans. The rainbow nation ideal is still being actively pursued despite Groenewald and his ilk, just as Afrikaans is still being actively enjoyed and grown despite Lesufi and his ilk. Groenewald’s contribution to the rainbow nation is comparable to Lesufi’s contribution to Afrikaans – the little they grudgingly contribute to it is merely because the Constitution obliges them to. Their behaviour comes across as counterproductive to those of us who believe in Afrikaans and in the rainbow nation – hence also in Afrikaans as a conciliatory language. The two of them should stick to matters they are familiar with, matters to which they have contributed positively in their political careers – of which there are many. Some people are heavily burdened by their historical baggage; as ill-qualified as Lesufi and his people are to judge the wellbeing of Afrikaans and the choice of Afrikaans, so too are Groenewald and his people ill-qualified to judge the wellbeing of the rainbow nation and the decision to pursue it. They can leave it to those of us who choose to live up to the ideal of Afrikaans as an inclusive language and the reconciliatory, non-racial rainbow nation; those of us who try to live out the Constitution instead of employing it as a divisive weapon. In short, it would be great if the likes of Lesufi and Groenewald left us alone, especially on these two topics.

In all honesty, though, it does seem to be the case that the votes by which the FF Plus grew were to a large extent a protest vote against the DA. As noted above, the people from whom one should seek an explanation for this phenomenon are the FF Plus, not the DA. From my conversations with sources in the FF Plus, it appears that there were six reasons in particular that prompted the swing from the DA to the FF Plus among Afrikaner voters.

Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, none of those reasons came up when DA sources were asked about explanations for the party’s loss of support.

The first reason was the Ashwin Willemse–Nick Mallett incident. During a live studio broadcast of a rugby discussion between Willemse, Mallett and Naas Botha on SuperSport, Willemse became annoyed with his fellow panellists and walked off the set. It later turned out that his irritation in particular with Mallett’s attitude had been building up for a long time.

The DA leader, Mmusi Maimane, immediately sided with Willemse and labelled the incident as racist. However, a subsequent investigation by Advocate Vincent Maleka found no evidence that racism had been involved. Groenewald and the FF Plus seized the opportunity to show that the DA had made allegations of racism where none existed, and had therefore been unfair to Mallett and Botha.

Groenewald’s view would undoubtedly have resonated with some white voters who – rightly or wrongly – feel they are being unfairly blamed for everything that is wrong in the country because of their race. It could have caused them to believe that the DA was part of that problem, and to doubt whether they shared the DA’s values, as personified by the party’s leader.

The second issue that dented the DA’s image among Afrikaans voters was the Patricia de Lille saga, which raged for nearly a year.

After De Lille had merged her party, the Independent Democrats, with the DA in 2011, she soon became the best-known Afrikaans-speaking leadership figure in the DA. Like any politician, she didn’t see eye to eye with everyone in her new party, but she was a great favourite with the public, and specifically Afrikaans speakers of all races and classes.

As the Western Cape’s provincial leader and as mayor of Cape Town, De Lille led the 2016 municipal election campaign for the party in its Western Cape heartland, which resulted in the DA’s biggest victory ever: close to a two-thirds majority in Cape Town and 62% of the votes in the Western Cape. The DA governed in 29 of the 30 Western Cape municipalities, which included a number of coalitions with other parties.

Directly after the 2016 election, media reports on tension between De Lille and other DA leaders started surfacing. As tends to be the case with internal disputes of this type, the discord first manifested itself slowly and then escalated rapidly. The feuding kept boiling over in public, and did great damage to the DA’s brand as a diverse yet united and professionally run outfit.

Various allegations were levelled at De Lille from within the DA, and some of the issues landed up in court. De Lille won each of the cases. There was great confusion among many DA voters about what exactly she was supposed to have done wrong, whether it was in any way serious enough to warrant the steps taken against her, and whether she had been treated fairly.

When she finally, after squabble upon squabble, agreed to resign as Cape Town mayor after a significant minority of her caucus had repeatedly refused to get rid of her, the DA was left without its most prominent and charismatic Afrikaans leader. No other Afrikaans leader since has enjoyed any comparable prominence or popularity. This acrimonious saga gave rise to a perception among Afrikaans speakers that a fellow Afrikaans speaker had been discriminated against once again, which made voters feel less at home in the DA and prompted them to consider other political homes, such as the FF Plus.

Meanwhile, the FF Plus calmly continued planning its election campaign, with no sign of comparable internal tension. Compared to the DA, the FF Plus began to acquire the kind of stable, harmonious and pro-Afrikaans image many voters found an attractive option.

The third example of a decisive blunder cited by the FF Plus was the DA’s decision to award a glowing score of 7,5 out of 10 to Panyaza Lesufi as Gauteng MEC for education in the party’s annual report card on the performance of the ANC government. If there is one person in the ANC who is an avowed opponent of Afrikaans as language medium in education, and is despised and detested by the vast majority of Afrikaans speakers on account of this stance, it is Lesufi. Heaven knows why the DA rates him so highly.

Incidentally, after the 2019 elections the DA reappointed the same person who had been the impetus behind Lesufi’s high score as the party’s provincial spokesperson on education. If that person, the DA’s MPL Khume Ramulifho, reckons Lesufi is so wonderful, he should perhaps join Lesufi rather than pretend to oppose him.

Within ANC circles, there was undoubtedly a realisation that Lesufi had flouted the constitutional ideals of multilingualism and reconciliation and stirred up racial tension. A few days after Cyril Ramaphosa stated in his presidential address at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria that no one should feel they are being discriminated against on grounds that include language, Lesufi was moved from education to finance.

It had been a long time since a political appointment was greeted with such joy in the Afrikaans community. The news dominated Afrikaans news bulletins, and virtually all Afrikaans cultural organisations welcomed it officially.

And then, two days later, Lesufi was reappointed as the Gauteng MEC for education, for reasons that I suppose will come out fully later. It was one of the biggest defeats for the constitutional commitment to multilingualism in many years. Within hours, the FF Plus captured the sentiment of Afrikaans speakers and devotees of the language (of all political persuasions) in their statement that they would aggressively oppose Lesufi and endeavour to unite all opposition parties in Gauteng against him. Where was the DA?

The fourth case highlighted by sources in the FF Plus is closely related to the third example above. It concerns the events at the Hoërskool Overvaal in Vereeniging, which was unjustly targeted because of the school’s policy to use Afrikaans as medium of instruction – as the South African Schools Act indisputably allows.

The school became the target of mass action by political parties such as the EFF, as well as other pressure groups, to change its language medium. Lesufi led the chorus by targeting the school rather than supporting the governing body. As the pressure built up, the signals coming from the DA indicated discomfort rather than support for the school. The right to tuition in Afrikaans wasn’t proactively and boldly defended by the Gauteng spokesperson on education for the DA – the party which up to that point had basically enjoyed absolute blanket support among that school community.

Once again the FF Plus grabbed the opportunity. It was reliably learnt that it was ultimately the national minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga, who, out of her own conviction, intervened and defused the situation by pointing out to Lesufi that it really wasn’t fair to expect a school to change its language policy without any prior notice.

Whatever the merits of the case, the FF Plus sided more unequivocally than the DA with the traditional DA voters, namely the school and its parents. It wasn’t that the DA specifically sided against its voters, but it was lukewarm in its response, and as the biblical book of Revelation warns in the letter to the church in Laodicea, all too often lukewarm water is spat out.

The examples were piling up, and the tide was starting to turn.

A few days later the tide became a tsunami with the fifth example: the Schweizer-Reneke case. Schweizer-Reneke is a town in North West that is fast gaining a disproportionately big reputation for the posting of controversial photos on social media.

In this case a teacher, Elana Barkhuizen, had taken a photo in a colleague’s classroom which showed black and white children seated at separate tables. The photo was sent to parents of the children and shared on social media. Without waiting for an explanation from the teacher’s side, the DA’s national youth leader, Luyolo Mphithi, labelled the issue as racism. Mphithi was supported by the DA’s national leader, Mmusi Maimane. The DA leader in North West, Joe McGluwa, welcomed Barkhuizen’s suspension.

After several days of great political tension and the threat of violence in Schweizer-Reneke, which had once again made national headlines with an Afrikaans speaker in the dock, Barkhuizen’s suspension was declared unlawful by the Labour Court and it was ruled that she was free to return to work.

During a dramatic and emotional media conference organised by the trade union Solidarity, a vulnerable and shocked Barkhuizen gave an account of her horrific experience. She widely found favour as someone whose entire life had been unjustly and comprehensively disrupted, and whose professional integrity had been grossly and baselessly insulted. Yet again it was mainly Afrikaans people, and specifically Afrikaans-speaking whites that already felt targeted, who took the events to heart.

While the DA had harshly and mistakenly condemned Barkhuizen, the FF Plus waited until all the facts had come to light, and then supported Barkhuizen. It was on every level the right thing to do, and the events at Schweizer-Reneke signified the moment the tide turned strongly in favour of the FF Plus. But this was merely the final nail in the coffin. The DA’s loss of support among some Afrikaners had a long lead-up.

Shortly before the election the FF Plus took advantage of another situation. The company MultiChoice threatened to withdraw its sponsorship of the Ghoema awards for Afrikaans music, because a music video featuring the singer and political polemicist Steve Hofmeyr had been nominated for an award. The FF Plus raised objections and said Hofmeyr was being discriminated against. They also portrayed it as an assault on Afrikaans music, on Afrikaans, and thus on Afrikaans speakers. This strategy found acceptance due to the mounting perceptions of fear and alienation among the section of Afrikanerdom susceptible to the FF Plus’s message.

There is, of course, another, larger section of Afrikanerdom who want to have nothing to do with Hofmeyr and who – Hofmeyr or no Hofmeyr – will never associate themselves with the FF Plus, and whose questions about the DA don’t include the FF Plus as a possible answer, but we deal with them in the chapter on the DA’s challenges.

Up to now in this chapter, we – like the FF Plus and its leader himself – have largely focused on the push factors that alienated voters from the DA, with the FF Plus as near-passive recipient of voter support. But there were also pull factors, things the FF Plus specifically did right in the election campaign.

Something that immediately struck me about the FF Plus’s strategy was the placement of their posters. You couldn’t move in the vicinity of any Afrikaans school without the FF Plus suddenly being a factor on the lampposts. They also fished in other ways in waters where the fish were plentiful, for instance by focusing in North West on places with a high concentration of whites – anchor points, as Solidarity calls them – rather than spreading their posters over sparsely populated areas. Hence centres such as Rustenburg, Potchefstroom and Klerksdorp received an avalanche of FF Plus posters.

The FF Plus decided to use Hofmeyr as the voice of its radio ads, which would irritate many Afrikaners intensely but inspire an equally intense minority. He is a divisive figure about whom few Afrikaners feel neutral – some believe he says what they feel and that he is actually a nice guy, while others perceive him as vulgar, despicable and racist.

Furthermore, the FF Plus learnt and shamelessly stole from the DP campaign of 1999, as shown by the ‘Slaan terug’ (Hit back/Fight back) slogan. It was a simple, negative, somewhat childlike campaign. Fight back with what? With ten MPs? And do people really still buy such infantile slogans as ‘Now or never’? Is ten seats ‘now’, or is it ‘never’? But this strategy undeniably worked for the FF Plus, so good for them.

What the FF Plus articulated was a kind of unfocused rage and exasperation on the part of some – and I emphasise some – Afrikaners. It’s a sentiment I won’t pretend to share – it’s fundamentally not how I was raised – but it’s something to which I am regularly exposed by virtue of my work and that I seek to understand to the best of my ability. By openly declaring that I don’t share it, I’m not trying to delegitimise it either. So let’s see how we can try to put this rage into words without identifying with it.

It is, in brief, the feeling that you are blamed for everything that goes wrong in South Africa while in actual fact you are doing your best to make everything work by personally working hard. It is the feeling that your children will be blamed forever for a past they had no part in. And it’s the feeling that the current government is really incapable of improving the country because infrastructure is collapsing, few new things of value are being created, foreign investors are scared off, domestic investors are chased off, productivity isn’t valued and there is little economic growth, so what will be left after everything has been redistributed?

If these frustrations, which are experienced by any rational person to a greater or lesser extent, start dominating your political thinking and directing your political choice, they turn into a kind of desperate rage that has found an unexpected echo and the appearance of an acceptable face in the anti-immigrant parties of Europe, the Brexit movement in Britain, and the Trump grouping in the United States. It’s a hitherto unfashionable school of thought which has acquired a voice (and hence votes) and is now becoming cocksure – who knows for how long. A strange characteristic of this grouping is that they have a plethora of platforms they use continuously, and yet they believe they are not being heard. They want to articulate their rage repeatedly, actually blare it out like a car without a silencer, and if you don’t agree with them, they think it’s because you don’t understand them. But you do understand – that’s why you disagree with them!

While anyone can appreciate the frustrations of such voters, many people get stuck on where the FF Plus votes came from and neglect to ask where those votes are going. What message do they send, and what are the consequences for the future? We Afrikaners have always been good at navel-gazing and articulating what we think of ourselves. But in the process we all too often forget that our behaviour isn’t just a mirror for ourselves. It’s also a window for others. What others see determines their behaviour towards us. We don’t live on an Afrikaner island. Actions have consequences. Where are these votes going?

What do others see in this Afrikaner voter behaviour? One of the instances of myth-making in which the FF Plus, to their credit, has been very successful is that their behaviour doesn’t offend others. I often wonder where people get that idea from. There are countless examples of behaviour that indeed comes across to others as deeply offensive, but the FF Plus manages to keep quiet about it, or maybe they are so self-centred that they fail to detect it, possibly because that’s not how they meant it. Maybe they simply don’t care what other people think. But communication science teaches us that the transmission of a message (an encoding) occurs in three phases. First there is the encoding, that which you intend to convey. Then the message is sent and decoded on the other side by the receiver. Decoding is how the receiver interprets and understands the message. Actions have consequences.

Whether or not a message is offensive is defined entirely by the receiver (decoder). For the sender (encoder) of the message to try and define it is already an indication of a conceited lack of understanding. Just as you can’t ask the DA what went wrong with their election message, you can’t ask the FF Plus how their behaviour is experienced by others.

Here is one example (among many) of such a reality check. A few days before the 2019 general election, the FF Plus held a media conference in parliament about their failed attempt to have Black First Land First (BLF) removed from the ballot paper because BLF discriminates on the grounds of race. Incidentally, in this case the FF Plus is definitely right – it really is a simple issue. What was instructive, however, was how black journalists experienced and reacted to the media conference. They felt it constituted bitter irony, out-and-out opportunism and more than a little dishonesty that the FF Plus suddenly stood up for non-racialism. I’m talking here about the perceptions of people I have come to know across the board as moderate, reconciliatory, non-racialist and informed – their perception of the FF Plus (as little as many FF Plus voters may intend or even realise this) corresponds to how many whites perceive the BLF: as racial bigots. This is also how the decision to vote in favour of the FF Plus is experienced even by moderate black voters and opinion formers – this is how it is decoded, even by someone such as the leading thinker Mondli Makhanya, who was rewarded for his efforts to explain this to Rapport’s readers by being reviled in a follow-up article by one Stephanie van Niekerk from Pretoria. Makhanya probably wonders why he even bothered.

But all of us write our own future. The FF Plus now has its ten members in the National Assembly and their behaviour will determine its fate, and the fate of its voters in the broader context. Of the ten, several are undoubtedly competent and we can even get excited about two of the newcomers, Wynand Boshoff and Philip van Staden. Perhaps they will make a positive contribution. It will depend on their behaviour. Only then will one be able to finally determine where the votes for the FF Plus are headed. For as the FF Plus may perhaps learn over time, the self-glorifying flames of ‘I vote for my own people’ all too often carry with them the ashes of reciprocity. If you are so keen on hitting, the bigger okes will hit back when they grow sick and tired of the bickering bantamweight – actions have consequences.