The tyranny of anti-racism.(South Africa)

Squinting through the hype surrounding the new South Africa, I reckon that the country is in the middle, farcical stages of authoritarianism. On Freedom Day, Women's Day, Heritage Day, and so on, heroes of the revolution pop out of limousines and luxury planes to dispense social upliftment through speeches to the "previously disadvantaged." After the straggly rallies, the government media either represent them as heady fests or convey scoldings for indifference to the creation of a better life for all.

Even most blacks have firmly re-designated every new holiday Going to the Beach Day, and their decision seems sound. The absurd evil of apartheid could be summed up in the prohibition of the majority of South Africans from the abundant and beautiful beaches; the freedom for all races to play in the sand together signals the blessings of the post-apartheid era. I began this article on March 21, Human Rights Day, and I could hear multilingual yells from children on the beach a few feet from my study.

But strangely enough, the present regime does not want blacks to go to the beach either. It wants them to assemble to hear about the glorious future, though this is a future they are increasingly skeptical about --and, again, they do not appear unreasoning. In spite of being able to go where they want, they are having trouble getting there, because they are poorer, sicker, and in more danger than ever before. The sad part of living near the beach is seeing skinny, poorly dressed black visitors hiking slowly in from the highway in the morning.

People of all races who want to do something about the future would rather pray than sit in the hot sun listening to politicians they believe do not care. This Human Rights Day saw a peppy multidenominational, multiracial religious service with 50,000 attendees. The Minister of Education, speaking at a much smaller gathering elsewhere, condemned the service as "divisive."

South African leaders have been experimenting for some time with such surreal language, which if accepted would make experience and common sense unspeakable, and so let the regime do whatever it wants. Established meaninglessness is necessary for those wanting to control the last country in Africa with the potential for a full and public intellectual life. The economy is international and fairly diversified, with good infrastructure, particularly in communications. Educated people want to stay and raise children and indigenous plants. Independent courts take constitutional promises seriously. In short, the sort of arrogant one-party state that stalks around perpetuating civil wars in order to vacuum up its neighbors' gold, diamonds, and oil can arise here--and burgeoning arms purchases testify that this is planned--only if the strong civil society shuts up. The government is therefore hoping to stave off frank criticism by means of political correctness.

Mainstream America sees political correctness chiefly as an aesthetic irritant (college students prevented from reading Shakespeare, a grim hyper-politeness settling over public discourse that is going to happen anyway). I suspect that in America the problem is more than just a good subject for internet jokes, but I am certain that in South Africa political correctness is a starving monster.

The open predations on freedom of speech in South African are not my most insomniac concern. After a road accident, policemen on the scene identified a journalist as such, beat him savagely, arrested him, threw him into a cell overnight, and refused him medical attention; he lost an eye. The Human Rights Commission issued subpoenas to white news editors (many of whom had sacrificed to oppose apartheid) for "racism"--a collection of crimes that included not identifying by name all the corpses in a photo of the aftermath of an African massacre. Officials regularly insult and threaten journalists for reporting on corruption. The Minister of Safety and Security is withholding crime statistics, and various departments are working in apparent coordination on plans to ban reporters from government property and from conversations with government employees unless by written ministerial consent. A draft law would give parliament the power to conduct trials for "false or misleading" statements about its own procedures and to hand out jail terms of up to three years. Now that the bravest journalists are exploring a network of multimillion-dollar bribes woven tightly around the president, they get anonymous death threats.