THE HSF – WHERE HAVE ALL THE LIBERALS GONE?
According to a recent press alert, the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) is soon to be hosting its first Quarterly Roundtable for 2007.
Essentially the HSF’s aim is to promote and support liberal democratic policies and ideals “in the South African political situation”. The opening line of its mission statement describes the HSF as “inspired by the courageous opposition to apartheid of its patron-in-chief and guided by liberal democratic principles.”
The press alert says, “The Quarterly Roundtable Series was launched in 2006 to create alternative arenas for dialogue on matters that affect constitutional liberal democracy and human rights”.
The topic this quarter will be “Chapter 9's - Review, Reform or Reduction?” and one the panel of four will be none other than Kader Asmal, the former education minister and the current Chair of the ad hoc committee set up by parliament to review South Africa’s Chapter 9 institutions.
(The other panellists are: Judith February from the Institute for Democratic Alternatives for South Africa; Mcebisi Ndletyana from the Human Sciences Research Council and Jody Kollapen, from the South African Human Rights Commission)
In her inaugural speech as the new director the HSF, on 29 May last year, Raenette Taljaard spelt out her vision for the organisation. In it, she said the following:
“It can never be in the interests of the liberal discourse to engage in a localised version of a binary Bush-like doctrine of being ‘with us’ or ‘against us’ in aiming to further this dialogue of values. Indeed one can argue that it would be the exact antithesis of liberal tolerance to do so.
“The challenge for the liberal cause is to capture the imagination of current and future leaders with solid contributions to contemporary policy challenges in South Africa’s national discourse and not merely to identify ‘enemies’ or ‘inherently illiberal’ opponents. This is an unhelpful and self-defeating labelling process that does little to further a dialogue of values and societal discourse about where we are in consolidating liberal democracy in South Africa.”
Basically she was saying that liberalism has a name-recognition problem in South Africa, that the HSF needs to be at the forefront of debate and that, in order to do that, it needs to engage all sectors of the political spectrum. Fair enough.
But if the Quarterly Roundtable panel is anything to go by, Taljaard is certainly going out of her way to accommodate the most virulent critics of liberalism and liberal discourse.
And, oddly, there don’t seem to be any liberals on the panel?
Take Kader Asmal for example, he has a long and well documented history of attacking liberalism, something he has described as “South Africa’s last credible instrument of privilege”.
A good example is to be found in a book published by the Friedrich-Naumann Stiftung (the president of its board of directors - Dr Otto Graf Lambsdorff – is one of the patrons of the HSF) called “Watchdogs or Hypocrites? The amazing debate on South African liberals and liberalism”. It contains an article by Kader Asmal and Ronald Suresh Roberts, titled “Liberalism’s hollow core”.
The article was originally published in the Sunday Times in October 1995, in response to a piece by then-editor Ken Owen. Among other things, Asmal and Roberts said the following:
“In the 1980s leading liberals (including Owen) muffled our calls for sanctions. Like parents protecting children from fire, they cautioned that we would only hurt ourselves”.
And,
“…liberalism, worn down over the years, has sadly become South Africa’s last credible instrument of privilege.”
And so far as Helen Suzman goes,
“At the core of liberalism is<
| Posted on 28/2/2007
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