The dispute over South Africa's treatment of Afrikaners has sparked a heated debate, with US President Donald Trump confronting President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2025 over the issue. Pretoria characterized the dispute as an attempt by an external power to interfere in its sovereign affairs and challenge the redress of apartheid. However, the contention did not begin with Trump, but rather rests on a question South Africa has spent three decades avoiding: can racial governance truly end while race remains the rule?
The term "ANC-apartheid" was coined by Dutch politician Martin Bosma in 2015 to describe what he saw as the ANC's continued use of racial discrimination in post-apartheid South Africa. His argument was that the expansion of race-based legislation across employment, procurement, and economic policy had replaced one form of racial governance with another, allowing an ANC political elite to consolidate power. This raises questions about the nature of racial government under apartheid, which was formalized through laws such as the Population Registration Act of 1950.
The Population Registration Act of 1950 formally classified every South African by race, creating the legal categories on which much of the apartheid system depended. The Group Areas Act of 1950 then translated those classifications into geography, determining where different racial groups could live, own property, and conduct business. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 codified racial inequalities in education, establishing a separate system designed to prepare black South Africans for positions the apartheid state envisaged they would occupy within the economy.
The apartheid system was dismantled in the 1990s, with then-president FW de Klerk holding a whites-only referendum in 1992, asking voters whether they supported continuing his reform process toward a negotiated constitution. Almost 69% voted "yes", giving the transition a decisive mandate and effectively endorsing the dismantling of the political system that had privileged the white minority. The 1996 constitution that followed prohibited unfair discrimination while permitting measures to advance groups disadvantaged by apartheid.
However, the democratic state retained race as a central pillar for addressing its legacy, leading to the 1998 Employment Equity Act and the emergence of BEE policy. The expansion of employment equity illustrates the trap of racial governance, with amendments signed by Ramaphosa introducing strict five-year numerical targets across 18 economic sectors, linking compliance to state contracts. This shifted policy from prohibiting discrimination to using race as a permanent administrative barrier to regulate employers and govern access to business opportunities.
The ANC's racial redress framework served as the primary mechanism by which the state could be looted, providing the legal and ideological cover for corruption to fester. As documented by the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture, Gupta family-linked syndicates actively weaponised BEE compliance and politically connected partnerships to secure lucrative government contracts under the banner of transformation. By hollowing out meritocratic oversight in favour of racial gatekeeping, the state built structural loopholes that crippled public procurement.
The parallels between economic and cultural marginalization are striking, with ANC leaders consistently defending the Dubul' ibhunu (Kill the Boer) chant, which has been used to intimidate and threaten South Africa's Afrikaner minority. The nation's highest judges have also been complicit, with the Constitutional Court clearing the chant and making use of strained legal definitions of "metaphor" to insulate a targeted threat from the country's hate speech laws. This has contributed to the structural undermining of Afrikaners' minority status, codifying racial discrimination in the economy and condoning an explicit call to violence against them.
Key points
- The ANC's continued use of racial discrimination in post-apartheid South Africa has raised concerns about the entrenchment of racial governance and discrimination.
- The expansion of employment equity and BEE policy has created a self-perpetuating bureaucracy and political constituency, with racial categories embedded in legislation and compliance systems.
- The ANC's racial redress framework has been used to loot the state and perpetuate corruption, with BEE compliance and politically connected partnerships used to secure lucrative government contracts.
