Racism and moral superiority: The left’s

Much of the world is embroiled in economic crises, analysed and predicted by the left

Richard Pithouse’s article, “The new racism: Moral superiority” (Mail & Guardian, 10 February 2024) is the latest of the left-confusions on race. Pithouse, the former editor-in-chief of the now defunct New Frame, won’t object to being assigned to the left. I, too, am on the left.

While not claiming anything like a left monopoly as provider of the light, left insights can seldom easily be dispatched to the darkness. Attributing moral superiority to seemingly universal “White arrogance” comes from the same mould as “White monopoly capital” and racial capitalism. I capitalise White to indicate its political infusions rather than just being a (not very accurate) descriptive term about skin colour.

By way of a reminder, a few words about the latter two before addressing White arrogance.

In 2017, the Guptas were increasingly and publicly being accused of state capture. Accusing their detractors of racism having failed, they turned to Bell Pottinger, Britain’s leading public relations company for sweetening unpopular politicians. To divert attention from the Guptas, Bell Pottinger came up with what they thought was the ideal enemy: White monopoly capital.

Few people had the slightest idea what monopoly capital meant, but many knew about Whiteness. To give Whiteness a face, they made the mistake of selecting billionaire Anton Rupert as the symbol of what was supposed to be the cause of black poverty and unemployment, along with being the enemy of transformation.

Strangely, Bell Pottinger seems to have forgotten that Rupert was one of their billionaire clients. He didn’t take kindly to being the poster-boy of Bell Pottinger’s White monopoly capital campaign and immediately cancelled his contract with them. Worse was to follow.

Responding to a complaint that Bell Pottinger tried to divide and conquer South Africans by abusing racial tensions, it was expelled from Britain’s Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA), which found Bell Pottinger’s secret campaign to stir up racial tensions in South Africa to be the worst breach of ethics in its history. The PRCA said the Bell Pottinger campaign was “likely to inflame racial discord in South Africa”.

Both Bell and Pottinger resigned from the company they had founded to save the company. But to no avail. The company closed down in September 2017.

White monopoly capital is indeed racist. What Bell Pottinger didn’t know was that the term was coined and spread by leading members of the left, with Whites being in the vanguard. Even Moeletsi Mbeki, who, in an article of February 2024, dismisses White monopoly capital as a fiction created by Bell Pottinger to create what he calls “scaremongering”. What Bell Pottinger couldn’t have known is that the term is still in vogue, precisely because of its racist divisiveness. Many groups promoting black economic empowerment (BEE) and black transformation rely heavily on it, as do sections of the left.

Racial capitalism, a couplet first coined in the 1980s by the South African left academics, has become one of those globally fashionable