South Africa: what does the future hold for the 'rainbow nation'?

President Jacob Zuma’s party remains the dominant force in South Africa despite a number of political and social changes.
EPA/Kim Ludbrook

As part of my work for the University of Sydney and the Australian government, I’ve visited South Africa seven times since retiring from politics in 2006. Each time something new has happened, and what appeared as a reasonably stable dynamic within the African National Congress (ANC) is no longer so.

In 2008, Thabo Mbeki was ousted as South Africa’s president and replaced by the unashamedly populist Jacob Zuma. Also in that year, a section of the ANC left to form the Congress of the People (COPE).

In 2013, former anti-apartheid activist, academic and businesswoman Mamphela Ramphele returned to politics after a long absence to form a new party which she has called Agang, Sesotho for “let us build”.

Radical youth leader Julius Malema was also expelled by the ANC in 2012 and has now formed his own party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). Malema calls himself “commander-in-chief”, and proposes expropriation of land without compensation, the nationalisation of mines and other strategic assets and free education and health care.

Added to these factors are the new divisions within the working class over which unions are best equipped to represent their interests. No longer is it the case that the Triple Alliance - involving the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the ANC - can say that the workers are “theirs”.

Open conflict between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and a newly-formed rival, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), is a case in point, with the latter claiming the NUM is too close to management. The killing of 34 striking mine workers in what is now described as the “Marikana massacre” in August 2012 has further exacerbated these divisions and raised doubts about the loyalties and priorities of the ANC.

Given all of these factors, it is not surprising that the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA) - led by the gutsy and much-respected Helen Zille - is making progress. It does well where it governs – most notably in the Western Cape where Zille is premier – as confirmed by a report from the nation’s Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation. In each of the four key performance areas – governance, strategy, human resources, and finance – the Western Cape was ranked first among the provinces and national departments.

In the 2009 national election, the DA’s vote grew by nearly 50% – up to nearly 16.66%. For the first time, the ANC fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to change the Constitution.

This all being said, the ANC remains the dominant force in South African politics. It led the struggle against apartheid and under Nelson Mandela managed a remarkably smooth transition to democracy. However, it is now under real pressure, a victim of its own complacency and sense of entitlement. Its opponents on the left (EFF) and in the centre (DA) can point to growing unemployment on the one hand - particularly among the young - and corruption and ineffective (sometimes dysfunctional) government on the other.

A recent survey conducted by Transparency International found that 47% said they had bribed at least one official in the last 12 months. Such bribes, those surveyed claimed, were needed to get the service they wanted or to “speed things up”.

One of the major battlegrounds will be the forthcoming election in the populous and wealthy Gauteng Province, currently run by the ANC. It is, as writer Ranjeni Munusamy has put it: “where decisions, deals and money are made”.

In the Gauteng Province, the DA won 21.86% of the vote in the 2009 elections, and in municipal elections a year later won 33.04%. It is more complicated this time around, however, with the EFF and others in play. Elections are to be held midway through 2014, and indications are that the ANC might fall below the halfway mark and that the DA will be close behind, with the EFF a credible third. Just what Agang’s pulling power will be is difficult to judge.

Poverty and unemployment are two issues that continue to cause political instability in South Africa.
EPA/Kim Ludbrook

What this tells us is that the country may be entering a period of political instability. Many within the middle-class are wanting to settle things down with good government but are unable to find the majority to do so while the disenfranchised are on the march and are restless for radical change.

There have been some improvements in South Africa’s Development Index score (a composite measure of life expectancy, education and income per capita) but it isn’t significant and sits alongside increasing unemployment levels. The official unemployment rate for 15-to-24 year olds is just under 50%, and for 25-to-34 year olds it is nearly 30%. In reflecting on politics in South Africa, it is always important to be reminded that it is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with government studies showing us that more than half the population are living in poverty.

The ANC government does have a strategy to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality in the form of the National Development Plan (NDP), but it is seen as too market-oriented by significant sections of the labour movement and some in the Cabinet. The capacity of the NDP to deliver for the government will depend on political leadership, but as South African political expert Richard Calland has written:

Will Zuma continue to back the NDP or will he zigzag on it according to the expedient needs of the day, as he does on most policy issues?

Zuma needs the strength that comes from unqualified legitimacy, but he has found that hard to find given continuing campaigns – mainly but not only by the DA – claiming corruption and maladministration, past and present. He easily fought off the “forces of change” within the ANC that sought his removal in favour of deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe last December, but continues to make headlines in relation to taxpayer-funded renovations to his private retirement home. Zuma’s power within the ANC has grown, but one cannot say the same thing about his authority within the nation at large.

Whichever way you look at it, South Africa is a nation of massive contradictions between rich and poor, modernity and backwardness, and hope and realism. Managing those contradictions in the transition to democracy was a remarkable achievement, but is all that much harder today as the electorate splinters and division replaces unity within the political class.

Geoff Gallop, Director, Graduate School of Government, University of Sydney

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

South African business must own up to its part in the corruption scandals

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South Africa is reeling from a string of scandals involving state owned enterprises and the Guptas, a family with close ties to President Jacob Zuma. A trove of recently leaked Gupta emails exposed the involvement of prominent businesses in the extensive corruption networks. Sibonelo Radebe asked Mills Soko to explain the implications of the scandals.

What do you make of the situation?

If nothing else, the Gupta leaks have shown us how perilously close South Africa is to losing everything so many people fought so hard for. Not only does corruption divert capital allocated for public services away from the poor, it hollows out important state institutions and, ultimately, frays the social and economic fabric of the country. It threatens the hard won democracy and political stability.

The ongoing revelations around state capture and patronage are giving South Africans an unprecedented and frightening glimpse into the machinery of corruption. The most unnerving element of the emails is how many of the transactions appear blatant and almost casual. The absolute cynicism and lack of ethics revealed in this correspondence is breath taking.

What we do with this knowledge as a country is going to count for everything. As a business community we can look away and call these tales of corruption isolated incidents – or we can step up to ensure that our organisations hold themselves to a higher standard. Most critically the law must take its course.

What does it tell us about the role of business?

The emails remind us that in any corrupt interaction it takes two to tango. And while governments and public money are so often at the centre, the enablers of corruption are not in government but in the private sector.

With the Gupta’s at the centre of the rot, prominent international companies like accounting firm KPMG, consulting giant McKinsey, ICT player SAP, engineering company Liebherr and capital equipment manufacturer Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries have been implicated in the mounting scandal. It’s worrying to see that companies of such calibre can be involved in such nefarious activity.

Corruption is, of course, not a new phenomenon – and nor is it unique to South Africa, as the Global Corruption Index shows. But certainly, the scale of what is going on in South Africa right now is unprecedented.

How do you rate the responses by the implicated businesses?

Companies have scrambled to distance themselves from the reputational firestorm that the Gupta leaks have unleashed. McKinsey acted promptly to suspend Vikas Sagar, a director in its South African office, to allow an internal investigation to proceed. For its part SAP, which originally denied the allegations, has similarly suspended South African staff while launching a full anti-corruption investigation , which is to be carried out by a multinational law firm and overseen by its executive board member Adaire Fox-Martin.

It’s convenient to blame these incidents on bad apples. But this doesn’t get below the surface of what is really going on. The scale of the corruption and the apparent ease with which it has been unfolding speaks to the fact that something is very wrong with the system. And it highlights an utter lack of business ethics and governance failures. This isn’t something the country can afford.

What should be done to root out the corruption?

While all of this may seem overwhelming, what is unfolding also presents the business community with an opportunity for some introspection. Calls have been made for greater purpose and responsibility on the part of South African leaders.

But how can we make sure these fine words and intentions are internalised? How do we make sure as a country that our business as well as our state institutions are committed to not allowing this to happen ever again?

Educational institutions, business schools in particular, are positioned as a first-line duty in making sure that graduates are equipped to recognise and reject corruption in any form. The country needs business leaders who are committed to building sustainable and profitable businesses but who are also mindful of their social and ethical obligations.

Citizens as workers and consumers also have a significant role to play. As individuals working in companies and purchasing goods and services from companies, they can condemn unethical behaviour from companies. This was partly reflected in how the general public put pressure on Bell Pottinger the UK based public relations firm which did work for the Gupta’s.

By rounding on Bell Pottinger, effectively causing the company to lock its Twitter account and issue a formal and unprecedented apology to the country (even though they also blamed the fiasco on bad apples rather than the system), South Africans have shown the power they can wield when united against wrongdoing.

But the country needs to go further. While government and business have not enjoyed the best relationship in recent times, they need to bury the hatchet and come together to fix the inequalities in this country. Deep divisions have laid South Africa open to the kind of racist exploitation that Bell Pottinger unleashed.

Until the country rights this situation, it will continue to remain vulnerable to these kinds of nefarious influences. South Africa needs to be united in the spirit of building a country that works for everyone – not just a select few. Things are broken, yes – but it’s not impossible to repair the damage.

Mills Soko, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

What is terrorism? What do terrorists want?

A vigil for the victims of an attack at Manchester Arena on May 23, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

Editor’s note: The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack at the Manchester Arena that claimed at least 22 lives and hospitalized 59 more people. One victim was just eight years old. The mayor of Manchester called the attack “an evil act.”

Because the media often sensationalizes terrorism and authorities tend to oversimplify it, demystifying common misconceptions about why individuals carry out political violence is important. We asked a professor at Georgetown University to answer three common questions about terrorism and political violence.

1. What is terrorism?

Terrorism is not an ideology like communism or capitalism.

Rather, terrorism is a tactic – a strategy used to achieve a specific end.

This strategy is often used in asymmetric power struggles when a weaker person, or group, is fighting against a powerful nation-state. The violence is aimed at creating fear in the targeted population and often provokes prompt and violent response from the state.

Acts of terrorism followed by violent crackdowns can become a cycle that is difficult to disrupt.

Recently, terrorist groups have begun using the internet and the media to spread fear and affect public opinion. The Islamic State uses the internet to recruit followers.

Nations also use terrorism tactics in other countries to safeguard their own national interest. Iran is known for supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel. The United States supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt against the communist government of Gamal Abdel Nasser and the mujahedeen in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.

2. What do terrorists want?

Terrorists are not all after the same thing.

Terrorists often justify their bloody acts on the basis of perceived social, economic and political unfairness. Or they take inspiration from religious beliefs or spiritual principles.

Many forms of terrorism were inspired by warfare between races, struggles between the rich and poor or battles between political outcasts and elites.

Some are ethnically based separatism movements, like the Irish Republican Army or Palestine Liberation Organization. The former cartel of Medellin are considered narco-terrorists because they combine drug trafficking with terrorism tactics to intimidate government and population.

Movements led by the extreme left like Colombia’s FARC are an example of terrorism inspired by a socioeconomic doctrine – in this case, a belief in communism.

Many terrorist groups are inspired by a specific interpretation of religious or prophetic scriptures. Al-Qaida and IS are two related groups that justify their violent actions as part of a crusade against nonbelievers. IS wants to establish a Caliphate, or an Islamic-ruled state.

How different terrorist groups act is informed by what they are trying to achieve. Some adopt a reactionary perspective aimed at stopping or resisting social, economic and political changes. Examples include IS, al-Qaida and the Army of God, a Christian anti-abortion group based in the U.S.

Others adopt a revolutionary doctrine and want to provoke change. Examples include the former Red Army Faction in Germany, the Irish Republican Army and Basque separatists in Spain.

3. Is terrorism getting worse?

Despite the intensity of media coverage and public perception, terrorism is actually not more frequent today than a few decades ago. For instance, terrorist attacks were far more common during the Cold War period than during the post-9/11 era. Some experts believe terrorism peaked during the 1970s.

Despite the recent attacks, the U.K. and Western Europe experienced relatively low terrorist activity during the period 2000 to 2016 compared with the period 1970 to 1995.

In the United States, terrorism attacks were in sharp decline from 1970 to 2011, decreasing from approximately 475 incidents a year to fewer than 20.

Worldwide, terrorism is highly concentrated in a handful of countries.

Terrorist attacks in 2014 were mainly concentrated in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria. These countries saw 78 percent of the deaths and 57 percent of all attacks in the world. Since 2000, only 3 percent of deaths caused by terrorist attacks took place in Western countries, including Australia, Canada, members of the European Union and the United States.

In the U.S., the number of deaths represents 2.2 percent of the worldwide terrorist death toll. The violence committed in Western countries by organized terrorist groups such as al-Qaida or IS represents approximately 30 percent, while so-called “lone wolfs” account for 70 percent of the attacks.

All in all, terrorism activity in Western countries is not worse than before the 9/11 era. The opposite is true.

According to American University professor Audrey Cronin, terrorism as a tactic does not work well. Cronin studied 457 terrorist groups worldwide since 1968. The groups lasted an average of eight years before they lost support or were dismantled. No terrorist organizations that she studied were able to conquer a state, and 94 percent were unable to achieve even one of their strategic goals.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Sept. 19, 2016. It has been corrected because of a previous inaccurate description of PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals).

Frederic Lemieux, Professor of the Practice and Faculty Director of the Master's in Applied Intelligence, Georgetown University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Why al-Qaida is still strong 16 years after 9/11

Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001.
AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer

Sixteen years ago, on September 11, 2001, al-Qaida conducted the most destructive terrorist attack in history.

An unprecedented onslaught from the U.S. followed. One-third of al-Qaida’s leadership was killed or captured in the following year. The group lost its safe haven in Afghanistan, including its extensive training infrastructure there. Its surviving members were on the run or in hiding. Though it took nearly 10 years, the U.S. succeeded in killing al-Qaida’s founding leader, Osama bin Laden. Since 2014, al-Qaida has been overshadowed by its former ally al-Qaida in Iraq, now calling itself the Islamic State.

In other words, al-Qaida should not have survived the 16 years since 9/11.

So why has it?

The ties that bind

A fighter from the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front holds his group flag in front of the governor building in Idlib province, north Syria.
Twitter/via AP

Much of the credit goes to al-Qaida’s extraordinary ability to both form alliances and sustain them over time and under pressure.

In my forthcoming book “Alliances for Terror,” I examine why a small number of groups, such as al-Qaida and IS, emerge as desirable partners and succeed at developing alliance networks.

Understanding terrorist alliances is critical because terrorist organizations with allies are more lethal, survive longer and are more apt to seek weapons of mass destruction. Though terrorist partnerships face numerous hurdles and severing al-Qaida’s alliances has been a U.S. objective for over a decade, the fact is that these counterterrorism efforts have failed.

It was allies that enabled al-Qaida to survive the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The Afghan Taliban stood by al-Qaida after the attack, refusing to surrender bin Laden and thereby precipitating the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Fleeing, al-Qaida was able to turn to allies in Pakistan to hide its operatives and punish the Pakistani government for capitulating to U.S. pressure to crackdown on the group.

It was alliances that helped al-Qaida continue to terrorize. In October 2002, for example, al-Qaida’s ally in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah, struck a bar and a nightclub in Bali, killing more than 200 and injuring more than 200 more, to brutally commemorate the first anniversary of 9/11.

And it was alliances that allowed al-Qaida to project viability. With the “prestige” that came with conducting 9/11, al-Qaida was able to forge more of them and indeed create affiliate alliances in which partners adopted its name and pledged allegiance to bin Laden.

Al-Qaida’s first and most notorious affiliate alliance, al-Qaida in Iraq, was formed in 2004 with Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Using the standing he accrued through his role in the insurgency in Iraq, Zarqawi then helped al-Qaida acquire its second affiliate in 2006, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. Then, in 2009, al-Qaida designated its branch in Yemen and Saudi Arabia as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Its alliances spanned the Middle East and helped it to project power, despite the U.S. war on terrorism.

A lower profile

While al-Qaida still sought affiliates, by 2010, it modified how its alliances work.

Al-Qaida forged an alliance with al-Shabaab in Somalia, but did not publicly announce it or ask al-Shabaab to change its name. Bin Laden justified to al-Shabaab’s leader the shift to a less visible form of alliance as a way to prevent an increase in counterterrorism pressure or a loss of funds from the Arabian Peninsula. He privately expressed concerns that al-Qaida’s name “reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them, and allows the enemies to claim deceptively that they are not at war with Islam.” Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, saw the move as bin Laden capitulating to members of al-Qaida who worried about “inflating the size and the growth of al-Qaida.” After bin Laden’s death, Zawahiri publicly announced al-Qaida’s alliance with al-Shabaab, though al-Shabaab still did not adopt al-Qaida’s name.

Though al-Qaida’s alliance arrangements have varied, these relationships have helped it to survive the loss of its founding leader in 2011 and the ascent of a far less capable leader. Zawahiri’s rise to the helm of the group was the consequence of an alliance, specifically between his original Egyptian group, al-Jihad, and al-Qaida. The alliance culminated in a merger in 2001, with Zawahiri becoming bin Laden’s deputy and successor.

However, Zawahiri lacks bin Laden’s cachet or diplomatic savvy. He is a better deputy than a leader. His poor handling of the strife between jihadist group al-Nusra in Syria and its parent organization, the Islamic State in Iraq (previously al-Qaida in Iraq and now IS), led to the alliance rupture between al-Qaida and its affiliate in Iraq.

Though al-Qaida had an acrimonious break with IS, it gained al-Nusra as an affiliate in the central conflict in the Sunni jihadist movement: Syria. As was the case with al-Shabaab, this alliance with al-Nusra did not include a rebranding and was initially kept secret. In addition, al-Nusra subsequently changed its name, an effort to gain more legitimacy within the conflict in Syria by publicly distancing itself from al-Qaida, though seemingly with al-Qaida’s consent.

Al-Qaida has not acquired another affiliate since the alliance rupture and rise of IS as a rival in 2014. It organized existing members into a new branch, al-Qaida in the Indian subcontinent, that year. The branch in South Asia reflected al-Qaida’s success at expanding beyond its predominantly Arab base, particularly in Pakistan.

Critically, with the exception of IS, al-Qaida’s alliances have been resilient over time. This is true despite ample reasons for its partners to abandon ties, such as the heightened counterterrorism pressure that comes with affiliation to al-Qaida; the death of its charismatic leader; and the Islamic State’s efforts to court al-Qaida allies. Even the Afghan Taliban remains unwilling to sever ties, even though doing so would eliminate one of the major reasons that the United States will not withdraw from the “forever war” in Afghanistan.

There is a window now for the U.S. to damage al-Qaida’s alliances: It has a weak leader and major rival. But that window may be closing as the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate crumbles and al-Qaida grooms bin Laden’s son as its future leader.

Tricia Bacon, Assistant Professor of Justice, Law & Criminology, American University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

The myth of white purity and narratives that fed racism in South Africa

Apartheid sought to divide blacks and whites in all spheres of life.
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In this extract from her book “The End of Whiteness: Satanism and Family Murder in Late Apartheid South Africa”, Nicky Falkof explores how ideas about disease, risk and danger that the apartheid government applied to black people were transposed onto fears about Satanism during the 1980s.

The grand apartheid regime’s most pressing fear was gelykstelling, an Afrikaans word that means “equalisation”. It believed that this would bring on the “mishmash cohabitation” and eventual bloedvermenging – blood mixing – that threatened the purity of the white race.

During the run-up to the 1938 election, the National Party campaigned on the argument that the ruling United Party’s policy of allowing mixed marriages would cause mass miscegenation. This, in the words of Afrikaans intellectual NJ van der Merwe, would lead to “mixing of the blood and the ruin of the white race”.

During the 1970s Afrikaans genealogist JA Heese uncovered records of more than 1,200 European men in South Africa who married non-white women between 1652 and 1800. Through this he determined that approximately 7.2% of Afrikaner heritage was non-white. This complicated history was not admissible within the apartheid imaginary.

French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that the existence of other races is essential to safeguard the stainlessness of our own:

Racism makes it possible to establish a relationship between my life and the death of the other … The death of the other, the death of the bad race, of the inferior race (or the degenerate, or the abnormal) is something that will make life in general healthier: healthier and purer.

The idea of purity suggests that there is an unadulterated, genuine, original race that must be protected. The unpolluted population must not be infected or otherwise sullied by contact with lesser races. Evocative terminology like bloedvermenging suggests this abomination. The rhetoric of racial purity is full of suggestive terms like illness, weakening and dilution. These imply the medicalisation of the nation.

Disease to justify segregation

White South Africa was not, of course, alone in its belief in racial purity. Homi Bhabha, in his foreword to Frantz Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth”, writes that in the colonial situation “the racialised person is seen as a threat, an infection, a symptom of social decline”.

Disease was a powerful tool in the ideological arsenal of South African segregationists. The day-to-day bureaucratic implementation of apartheid racial classifications owed more to common sense than to appeals to blood and ancestry. But the mythology of racial difference, if not the methods by which it was implemented, depended on ideas about infection, dirt and the possibility of a pure blood. Those who aren’t defined as white have always been considered “ugly” in the European mindset, which suggests disease and ill health.

Fears of the spread of bubonic and later plagues in the urban slums were a useful justification for the Cape Colony to initiate segregation and forced removals. This was a process of moral, social and economic injustice in the cities of Cape Town and Port Elizabeth that aimed to remove Africans from within the city environs without jeopardising white farmers’ and industrialists’ labour requirements.

When black city dwellers were first ejected from Cape Town at the start of an ongoing project of land dispossession and urban segregation, this was done in response to fears of the “medical menace” of plague. Health and sanitation became catch-all excuses for segregation. The imperative to separate African slum-dwellers from colonists was stated in extreme terms.

“Infected” urban Africans were demonised as a threat to civilisation in the Cape. The “degenerate poor” were a danger to the health and stability of the “imperial race”. Africans living in urban areas were seen as being only partly modernised, neither true to their tribal roots nor capable of proper civilisation. They were “maladjusted” and susceptible to disease, which could be spread to the colonists.

Jacana Books

These powerful medicalising ideas remained in force after South Africa became a Union in 1910. Later, their classification of the poor black body was a constant refrain in the moral and social justification for apartheid even while the state separated people into racial groups based on hair curl, economic status, language and other common-sense attributes.

The language of hygiene

The requirement to maintain racial purity was applied to black people as well as to whites. Colonial engineering during the 19th century had aimed to break the power of the chiefs. By the 20th century these tribal authorities had become an important pole in the state’s management of the black population. The homelands system attempted to isolate Africans in an imagined pre-industrial tribal past. It kept them away from the cities and the influence of modernity. This retribalisation policy was couched in the language of culture and nation. It was, in fact, a deeply cynical exercise in which hybrid or even invented ethnicities were forced upon people for the purpose of controlling their movement, labour and lives.

Officials “were well aware of the artificiality of their ethnic engineering”. In some cases, in areas where chieftainships did not exist, government functionaries would simply make them up. They would create a new “traditional” lineage and install a client chief who would keep his subjects in the subdued state that apartheid required of its labour force.

All of these acts of social engineering were expressed in the language of hygiene. Officials cited the need to protect apparently original tribal cultures from polluting contact with modernity – and, of course, all the benefits for social health, life expectancy, political power and the rest that modernity can bring. A particularly hyperbolic statement from then cabinet minister Albert Hertzog, made in 1964, gives a sense of the corrupting effects that Western culture was thought to have on the “primitive” African and the dangers this presented for white society:

It is afternoon and the Bantu [meaning black African] house-boy is in the living room cleaning the carpet. Someone has left the television set on. The house-boy looks up at the screen, sees a chorus line of white girls in scanty costumes. Suddenly, seized by lust, he runs upstairs and rapes the madam.

Discussions surrounding both the importance of Afrikaans as the medium of government and education and the fear of Anglophone influence included suggestions of illness, pollution, dirt, corruption and sickness that characterise the language of racial purity and the quarantined body politic. A rhetoric of contagion and disease became common to white South Africa. As anthropologist Mary Douglas illustrates, dirt, pollution and taboo are cultural constraints that police boundaries:

Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter.

Apartheid was nothing if not systematic. It was a bureaucratic behemoth that attempted to classify people into easily managed categories so as to maintain the tenuous margins of whiteness. Black people were superfluous to the white nation, existing only as labour potential, dismissed as dirty and diseased and therefore excluded from the citizenry to protect the health and purity of the state’s primary subjects.

These same medicalising ideas appeared in the public conversation around Satanism and Satanists. The supernatural threat contained accusations of dirt, pollution and illness, of infection and parasitism, of something impure threatening and entering into the realm of the hygienic. The Satanist posed a similar danger to the health of the nation as the black person who was “out of place”.

Nicky Falkof, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation.