Will South Africa Be Okay?. Jan-Jan Joubert

It’s also a window for others. What others see determines their behaviour towards us. We don’t live on an Afrikaner island. Actions have consequences. Where are these votes going?

      What do others see in this Afrikaner voter behaviour? One of the instances of myth-making in which the FF Plus, to their credit, has been very successful is that their behaviour doesn’t offend others. I often wonder where people get that idea from. There are countless examples of behaviour that indeed comes across to others as deeply offensive, but the FF Plus manages to keep quiet about it, or maybe they are so self-centred that they fail to detect it, possibly because that’s not how they meant it. Maybe they simply don’t care what other people think. But communication science teaches us that the transmission of a message (an encoding) occurs in three phases. First there is the encoding, that which you intend to convey. Then the message is sent and decoded on the other side by the receiver. Decoding is how the receiver interprets and understands the message. Actions have consequences.

      Whether or not a message is offensive is defined entirely by the receiver (decoder). For the sender (encoder) of the message to try and define it is already an indication of a conceited lack of understanding. Just as you can’t ask the DA what went wrong with their election message, you can’t ask the FF Plus how their behaviour is experienced by others.

      Here is one example (among many) of such a reality check. A few days before the 2019 general election, the FF Plus held a media conference in parliament about their failed attempt to have Black First Land First (BLF) removed from the ballot paper because BLF discriminates on the grounds of race. Incidentally, in this case the FF Plus is definitely right – it really is a simple issue. What was instructive, however, was how black journalists experienced and reacted to the media conference. They felt it constituted bitter irony, out-and-out opportunism and more than a little dishonesty that the FF Plus suddenly stood up for non-racialism. I’m talking here about the perceptions of people I have come to know across the board as moderate, reconciliatory, non-racialist and informed – their perception of the FF Plus (as little as many FF Plus voters may intend or even realise this) corresponds to how many whites perceive the BLF: as racial bigots. This is also how the decision to vote in favour of the FF Plus is experienced even by moderate black voters and opinion formers – this is how it is decoded, even by someone such as the leading thinker Mondli Makhanya, who was rewarded for his efforts to explain this to Rapport’s readers by being reviled in a follow-up article by one Stephanie van Niekerk from Pretoria. Makhanya probably wonders why he even bothered.

      But all of us write our own future. The FF Plus now has its ten members in the National Assembly and their behaviour will determine its fate, and the fate of its voters in the broader context. Of the ten, several are undoubtedly competent and we can even get excited about two of the newcomers, Wynand Boshoff and Philip van Staden. Perhaps they will make a positive contribution. It will depend on their behaviour. Only then will one be able to finally determine where the votes for the FF Plus are headed. For as the FF Plus may perhaps learn over time, the self-glorifying flames of ‘I vote for my own people’ all too often carry with them the ashes of reciprocity. If you are so keen on hitting, the bigger okes will hit back when they grow sick and tired of the bickering bantamweight – actions have consequences.