Roets made four bold claims — about South Africa’s collapse, the ANC’s governance, Afrikaner persecution, and societal breakdown. As an Afrikaner myself I see the same reality he does but draw starkly different conclusions. Roets is partly correct, but fundamentally wrong.
This week, Ernst Roets, former deputy CEO of AfriForum, appeared on The Tucker Carlson Show in the US, spotlighting what he sees as the dire plight of Afrikaners. His supporters are cheering, seeing a champion for their cause. His critics are fuming, branding him a privileged, treasonous racist, peddling misinformation.
So, who is right?
Roets made four bold claims — about South Africa’s collapse, the ANC’s governance, Afrikaner persecution, and societal breakdown. As an Afrikaner myself, living in the same community as Roets (our kids even attended the same school for a time), I see the same reality he does but draw starkly different conclusions. Roets is partly correct, but fundamentally wrong.
Roets’ four claims
- State of South Africa: Roets paints the country as crumbling under a racist government, one that discriminates against minorities, pursues land expropriation like Zimbabwe’s disastrous model, and presides over rampant crime and failing infrastructure.
- ANC Governance: He casts the African National Congress (ANC) as a socialist liberation movement with a violent past, committed to black nationalism and communist allies, pushing a two-phase “national democratic revolution” while denying atrocities like farm murders.
- Afrikaner Community: Roets describes Afrikaners as a resilient, religious people with deep roots in South Africa, facing targeted farm attacks, dehumanisation, and a looming genocide risk, arguing their only future lies in self-rule as an ethnic enclave.
- Societal Dynamics: He sees South Africa as a tinderbox of racial tensions and mob violence, forcing communities to self-organise amid a failing state.
Reality check
Roets and I share some ground, but his lens distorts the bigger picture. Here’s where he stumbles.
South Africa’s struggles are real — but structural, not racial
Yes, the country grapples with high poverty, crime, and a fiscal crisis, as Roets notes — and I agree these partly stem from ANC ineptitude over three decades. But the root lies deeper: an economy shaped by apartheid that can’t absorb our young democracy’s workforce.
Crime statistics show that murder and robbery plague all races, not just minorities. Infrastructure — like Eskom’s blackouts or potholed roads — is crumbling, but so is that of the United States, due to gridlocked politics and self-interest. Our crisis isn’t racial; it’s structural.
The ANC isn’t the socialist boogeyman Roets imagines
True, the ANC has socialist roots, bolstered by Soviet support during the Cold War against Western-backed apartheid. Its distributive policies — think bloated public debt and BEE — have spooked investors. But look closer: former president Thabo Mbeki ditched the 1990s’ socialist Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) for the market-friendly Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (Asgi-SA).
Because of this pivot, he was ousted in a 2008 coup by trade union grouping Cosatu, Julius Malema, and Jacob Zuma, who then opted for State Capture. Zuma’s technocrats drafted the National Development Plan (NDP), but Cosatu rejected the “neo-liberal” bent it its economic chapter, and corruption eroded confidence.
By the end of that era, Cyril Ramaphosa inherited a hollowed-out state.
The ANC did have one socialist experiment: social grants for 27 million poor South Africans, a de facto universal basic income which Japan, the US, UK and EU all copied during Covid-19.
It’s unsustainable, sure, but it’s kept millions from starvation.
So, in essence, the ANC has been quite centrist, capitalist, pragmatic and rational in its policy approach. But it tried to govern, debilitated by its alliance partners, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Cosatu, both of which collapsed as global communism waned and the majority of affiliate unions left the body.
The ANC, now in the Government of National Unity alongside the market-fundamentalist Democratic Alliance, has been incompetent, but as a centre-left party set up to fail by the structure of the political landscape, not on the basis of socialism or race hate as Roets imagines.
Afrikaners are scared and unsafe, but thriving
As for the Afrikaner, in this same period the vast majority have become wealthier, healthier and more culturally expressive. Afrikaner music, art and festivals have become a staple of social life, with outdoor food markets, live events and smiling school children singing in support of a now world-famous and increasingly multiracial Springbok rugby team.
Why? Apartheid’s investments in white education and infrastructure handed us a head start. Roets mourns decline from a perch of privilege.
Crime? It’s brutal — rape and murder rates rival war zones — but it’s a national scourge, not an Afrikaner-specific one.
Part of the reason for the Afrikaner’s relative success has been our dominance of the private sector and strong civic institutions in which the likes of Roets, and I, have found ourselves.
By way of example: if you have a new pool pump or geyser installed at your house, it will be a white entrepreneur in a bakkie (truck in the US), who arrives with a team of black workers who are most often undocumented Zimbabweans, Ghanaians, or Mozambiquans, who do the work. The white man gets the profit and the migrants get the wages, and black South Africans get left behind.
So, the difference between Roets’ perception and reality, is that insecurity is a South African reality shared across race groups — while fearful and seemingly embattled Afrikaners draw the risk on to themselves, as they make money in the private sector and live under a perceived race-specific threat.
To do so is at first irrational, until one considers that Afrikaners, including myself, were socialised to see the world through a prism of “race first”. This meant that people in a public park were first and foremost “black or white”. That the politician driven around in a luxury car is first and foremost a “black or white” person — not a mere person.
This is the residue of an apartheid mentality, and it is no surprise that when individuals in the Afrikaner community suffer violent crime, as they often do, their response is to think, “Why am I, as a white person, being targeted.”
Now to be fair, South Africa does sport our fair share of hateful race-baiters who spew divisive rhetoric. Where I do agree with Roets, is that the ANC government and the institutions of state under their influence, including the courts, have naively condoned unhelpful expressions of political speech, such as the singing of the “Kill the Boer” song. They have described these as tolerable, against the background of the historical context. But the context has changed, and these words are no longer helpful, but harmful.
In my view, this has been a major misstep by the ruling black majority from the perspective of nation-building, and has played into the sensitivities and fears of many South Africans, especially the Afrikaners. In that sense, Roets is now a symptom of the failure to put a stop to the divisiveness.
In light of all these national challenges, Roets is right to ask, “When will the big black mob come for me?”
But where Roets is wrong, is that the mob is not sitting around plotting over him as an Afrikaner in particular. Rather, the forms of mass social unrest, destruction of property and anarchical looting that we occasionally see in South Africa, targets truck drivers of African descent, public and private infrastructure alike, and finds its roots in inequality, and a decimation of the social fabric — a breakdown in law and order.
In that regard, Afrikaners today are unfortunate bystanders, and historically were the not-so-innocent architects.
Land reform isn’t Zimbabwe 2.0 — yet
As for Roets’ major assertions about land and property rights being under threat: the facts are that the ANC government is committed to changing the racial composition of land ownership, as was the Afrikaner apartheid government.
However, far from arbitrarily “seizing land” as in Zimbabwe, the ANC initially set out to use a system of compensation of owners, against whose property land claims had been instituted, and later through a process of constitutional review and law sought to enable the state to expropriate land.
Any honest analyst would admit that the ANC has drifted dangerously towards populism in relation to the handling of land reform, forced to do so once again by their own ineptitude at executing their earlier principled policy stance.
But the forces demanding the wholesale expropriation of land held by whites, have increasingly been from outside the ANC and not within, such as from the Economic Freedom Fighters and uMkhonto Wesizwe, the party of Jacob Zuma. The reason for this is that criticism of the ANC by these more radical margins of the ANC’s own historic constituency is that it has been too pragmatic and responsible, and not radical enough.
In saying so, I share Roets’ view of the risk of the ANC’s populist slide, but know that the underlying drivers, as they were in Zimbabwe, are the inability to govern the economy in an inclusive way for the benefit of the black majority, not on the basis of race hate. It was a matter of political survival for Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and similarly it’s a matter of political survival for the ANC after Ramaphosa.
The tragedy of Roets’ narrative
In conclusion, the tragedy of Roets’ privileged ignorance is that it decimates the one monument around which 99.99% of South Africans have rallied — non-racial democracy, united in its diversity.
Roets says he “respects” Mandela, and this is the reason: Mandela’s legacy of reconciliation was real and has been the only reason the particularly fraught social contract in South Africa has held as long as it has.
Were it not for the humanity of the black majority, and their patience in the face of persistent white welfare, even as they suffer, Mr Roets and I would not have the freedom today to have this debate.
His enclave dream and tall tales of “black danger” echo apartheid’s swart gevaar paranoia. Instead, he should thank his stars for this stunning country and its peace-seeking people, desperate for a better future. He is fortunate to be part of a society in which forgiveness rather than retribution is the organising principle.
Starting there, we have much work to do to build a better South Africa, and in that regard, we are no different from the rest of the world. DM
Dr Marius Oosthuizen writes in his capacity as a citizen.
If you wish to comment on this issue, please send an email to [email protected]. Letters will be edited.
Letters to the Editor
Dr. Marius Oosthuizen has captured the essence of South Africa’s social fabric, providing a comprehensive and contextualised perspective on the country’s historical and socio-economic realities. South Africa’s policies are designed to address and redress deep-seated inequalities within society—they are not intended to marginalise or harm white Afrikaner citizens.
In contrast, Ernst Roets and his colleagues present a highly misleading and skewed portrayal of the country. Despite claims to the contrary, they remain part of a privileged group that continues to accumulate wealth. This privileged position was built on the systemic oppression of black South Africans, including Coloured, Indian, and Khoisan communities.
The majority of South Africans seek a fair share in the nation’s wealth—wealth that was largely accumulated through the policies of the apartheid government. While all racial groups must work together to build a more equitable South Africa, organisations like AfriForum and Solidariteit must first acknowledge the historical injustices that afforded them their privileged position. Only by recognising these realities and committing to meaningful contributions toward a just and inclusive society can true reconciliation and progress be achieved.
I agree with the assertion that there was a huge failure on the apartheid government to implement their policies, because of corruption and incapacity. Regards, Victor Cloete
Very good article, thank you. People like Ernst Roets, Afriforum and Solidarity should also learn about American history and what the white people did to the First Nation (Native Americans). The Apartheid regime, which I lived under, provided housing, transport and schools, albeit not the best, but unlike the white Americans who treated the First Nation as savages and the black slaves as lower than shark poo. I am not saying that Apartheid was a good thing, far from it. It should never have been permitted. But they were also stupid enough to ban whites from learning any vernacular language, which, clever blacks, used to their advantage. It’s time we learn from our history and correct what is wrong and TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. People are more forgiving then. Oh, and by the way, I am of Afrikaans and English heritage and proud of my Afrikanerdom. I definitely will not be escaping to the Donald Trump America. Kind regards, Dianne Banks