Fun fact #1: In 1997, Bantu Holomisa founded the United Democratic Party with Roelf Meyer. Meyer was later elected as its deputy leader.
Fun Fact #2: 20 years later, when the EFF went to the Constitutional Court on the Nkandla matter against the Speaker and President, their bedfellow was the second applicant, AKA the UDM. There was never any mention that they’re an evil party because they were half founded by a former apartheid minister.
Today, however, in terms of EFF lore of South Africa, we must remember that Roelf Meyer was an apartheid minister and in the reductive manner of EFF storytelling, that makes him unsuitable for anything. It demonstrates a CT scan of the EFF’s political mindset; there’s little room for positive effect if it doesn’t meet with a political narrative.
I don’t think anybody, even the EFF, is disputing that the appointment will sure up USA-SA relations. I also don’t think anybody will say that’s a bad thing. Where we will get contestation is when we debate the costs of such suring up. The cost of sending Meyer in to bat doesn’t seem to be much.
People who speak your language
People like to engage with people who can speak their language. It’s why Liam Jacobs is a sought-after commodity in Western Cape politics, why drag shows appeal to a disproportionately large section of queer communities, and why dagga smokers like to jam to Van Pletzen.
Does Meyer have a checkered past? Perhaps, though, even his biggest critics aren’t making plain what he did that they don’t like. They mostly only point to this occupation of office.
If that’s the case, they do themselves a disservice to ignore his inclusion in the “verligtes” within the Nats. That was a group that sought far more moderate ideology than that required by Verwoerdian beliefs.
They even pushed the National Party so far that the real Verwoerdians split off to create the Herstigte Nasionale Party because how dare the national government allow Maori players and spectators during a New Zealand rugby tour.
Meyer was part of a faction that pushed the real, serious, radicalised racism out, and to those of his age, he was considered an awful lefty.
Did he single-handedly free South Africa? Of course not. Not even Mandela can claim that. Did he play far more of a role than people give him credit for? Absolutely. He certainly played a greater role than the army of retweeters.
Ignorance
It’s the ignorance of the internal resistance he put up in his own party and pursuits he made to bring us to 1994 and beyond that are most offensive. It’s very easy to say “ah, Apartheid minister, so must be bad” just as it is to say, “ah. Mandela blew bombs in public so bad.”
It’s not like he was bigger than the system he was in, and it would be folly to think he didn’t play a role in seriously shifting that system. Without the verligtes to act as moderators, how differently do we think the 80s would have gone?
We could speculate, but the notion that black people were grouped geographically and that the government probably had nukes at the time is enough to make me think we dodged something more serious.
Maybe he didn’t put his hand up to say, ” Hey, let’s stop this but what if he did? Would that have taken the struggle any further? Probably not. Would having someone less radical in a leadership position have been more beneficial? How intentional it was, I don’t know, but one less radical minister could only be a good thing.
A good negotiator
So to the present day. We know Washington likes somebody who speaks their language. We know that they have some awkward white genocide narrative agenda. We know that they won’t give us the time of day if we just tell them that they’re being stupid.
Where is the harm in sending a great negotiator who can persist in getting them onside? Where is the harm in having somebody who will engage them properly in a manner that may actually lead to results while diffusing political rhetoric? Put differently, how far did his predecessors get us?
Perhaps when you learn about his contributions to the initial deconstruction of apartheid from within, you might have a different view, but one thing is for sure.
If we’re going to dismiss him outright because of a seat he held in his past, without even considering what he did in it, we’re missing out on what could be a useful player in Washington.
Time will tell. In international politics, you need tact, and for that, I’d put my money on the dude who crossed the apartheid line, set up a meaningful political movement and made massive headway in the Multiparty Negotiating Forum.
