Please do point out where I said the apartheid regime was a democracy?

I will repeat what I did say.

“In some limited but significant respects (like the inner workings of parliament), apartheid SA were more democratic, than South Africa today, (particularly in the Mbeki era).”

Here is an interesting philosophical point for you to ponder in respect to your statement (which – by the way – is an incorrect summary of what I did say).

“You might have chosen to argue that some aspects of life under apartheid were better than they are now. For some reason, you chose to argue that apartheid was better than things are now.”

If – heaven forbid – it turns out that ‘democracies” legacy in South Africa is negative.

And by that I mean, measurable things – whether inequality has risen, life expectancy has fallen, infant mortality is up and even subjective opinion, that people say it’s negative.

Then my question to you is, should we mention it? Should we talk about it? And if we say it, does it mean we want apartheid back?

1. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your logic, if I criticised Stalinist Russia, it means I want the return of the Tsars and all that came with them?

No. Have you some evidence for this claim?

In any case, if you criticized the Stalinist USSR on the ground that it wasn’t an absolute monarchy, then one might reasonably suspect that you were, in fact, looking forward to the restoration of the Tsar.

2. Neither you or Eusebius takes me on, on the facts or even how to interpret them – you revert to broad brush strokes of moral condemnation to crowd out debate, because I suspect you know deeper scrutiny would be deeply embarrassing.

Eusebius pointed out that your choosing to class the apartheid regime as a democracy – a ‘democracy’ in which the vast majority of the population was deliberately prohibited from participation; indeed, in which it was argued that black folks were incapable of basic self-rule – is a straightforward absurdity.

There’s no reasonable interpretation of the word democracy on which apartheid South Africa was more democratic than its successor; the facts foreclose that option. This was pointed out to you. You can’t complain that you haven’t been engaged with.

3. It’s precisely the bogeyman ‘apartheid’ which is held up to deflect criticism of the current regime. It is therefore a legitimate endeavor to examine the rhetoric of the new SA against ‘apartheid’, to break through the smoke and mirrors.

Some connection between the first and the second sentences – some reason other than your say-so – wouldn’t be superfluous. Regardless, even were you able to make the connection, the relevance of this piece of argument would remain unobvious: since you were defending apartheid; and since defending apartheid and examining the rhetoric of the new SA are distinct, it’s unclear what difference defending your right to critically examine the rhetoric of the new SA makes to the viability of the defence of apartheid.

4. Which apartheid do I want back? Colonial apartheid, grand apartheid and the bantustans, petty apartheid like separate toilets? A qualified vote? Bantu education? Human rights abuses and forced removals? A volkstaat? Please be more specific? If you can’t bother it shows your not making a serious point but just seeking to obfuscate.

Who knows? You took good care not to specify which form of apartheid had greater social capital than SA’s present; you were happy to express a preference for the genus apartheid. Since you left your specific preference indeterminate, all that can be said with confidence is that you prefer some sort of apartheid or the other.

5. I argued against grand and petty apartheid and for one person one vote at school, at university too, I was called a traitor of my people, I received death threats, got assaulted once, and received death threats again when I worked for the TRC. I did so even though I knew it would be the end of the dream of an Afrikaner homeland, and probably the beginning end of Afrikaans. I did it because I thought apartheid was unjust. I still do.

This isn’t consistent with your claim – here and at Eusebius’ – that the apartheid regime had greater social capital than the post-apartheid. Given your further argument that social capital is necessary for sound democracy, and that post-apartheid SA lacks social capital – at least to the extent that apartheid SA possessed it – it follows that apartheid-era SA was a democracy, while its post-apartheid successor isn’t.

There’s a slightly weaker line you seem to push sometimes: that post-apartheid SA has less social capital than apartheid SA, in which case the argument comes to the claim that apartheid-era SA was more democratic. There’s some support for this from your additional claim that the apartheid era government followed its own laws, so – we’re invited to accept – apartheid SA was more democratic.

The obvious consequence of these thoughts is that apartheid SA was a morally superior regime. Democracy is pretty clearly a value of some importance. The point of apartheid was arbitrarily to deny non-white folks the right to rule themselves; that right appears to be central to democracy. The heart of the case against apartheid was that its denial of the non-white capacity for self-rule was both false and unjust; post-apartheid democracy was supposed to be the vindication of that claim. Necessarily, therefore, it was both democratic and more democratic than apartheid. Your view is that it isn’t – that, actually, the defenders of what was called democracy under apartheid had the better case. It’s not hard to see why you’re going to be taken to be a defender of apartheid.

6. I never once even remotely said that “the difference in social capital justifies apartheid”.

This followed more or less directly from the context at Eusebius’. There was some tricky business over whether nostalgia about apartheid was justified. Your view is that it is: that, on reflection, those who prefer apartheid to its successor are reasonable. The hard part is backing up this claim. As far as I can tell, you chose to make the argument on the ground that apartheid was more democratic because it possessed greater social capital (and you made the beginnings of an argument that the apartheid state was more likely to obey its own laws). The obvious consequence is that the nostalgia over apartheid was justified because apartheid was more democratic; it was more democratic because it had greater social capital.

(You might have chosen to argue that some aspects of life under apartheid were better than they are now. For some reason, you chose to argue that apartheid was better than things are now.)

1. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your logic, if I criticised Stalinist Russia, it means I want the return of the Tsars and all that came with them?

2. Neither you or Eusebius takes me on, on the facts or even how to interpret them – you revert to broad brush strokes of moral condemnation to crowd out debate, because I suspect you know deeper scrutiny would be deeply embarrassing.

3. It’s precisely the bogeyman ‘apartheid’ which is held up to deflect criticism of the current regime. It is therefore a legitimate endeavor to examine the rhetoric of the new SA against ‘apartheid’, to break through the smoke and mirrors.

4. Which apartheid do I want back? Colonial apartheid, grand apartheid and the bantustans, petty apartheid like separate toilets? A qualified vote? Bantu education? Human rights abuses and forced removals? A volkstaat? Please be more specific? If you can’t bother it shows your not making a serious point but just seeking to obfuscate.

5. I argued against grand and petty apartheid and for one person one vote at school, at university too, I was called a traitor of my people, I received death threats, got assaulted once, and received death threats again when I worked for the TRC. I did so even though I knew it would be the end of the dream of an Afrikaner homeland, and probably the beginning end of Afrikaans. I did it because I thought apartheid was unjust. I still do.

6. I never once even remotely said that “the difference in social capital justifies apartheid”.

Incidentally, there’s a bunch of similar justifications of the slave-holding South; I thought you might enjoy this.