South Africa’s 7% majority and ungodly democracy
Opinion
Political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi once argued that South African Whites are a numerical minority but a cultural majority.
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I THINK there is a perspective that many people must embrace: the White minority in South Africa, roughly seven percent of the population, is not merely a demographic statistic. They are part of a larger, wealthy, Anglo-Saxon global dynasty stretching from Australia through Europe to the United States and Canada.
Only by acknowledging this transnational network of power can one begin to understand why, in a country where over 90 percent of citizens are Black, the flames of economic, political and cultural influence continue to be fanned by such a small minority.
South Africa remains a country of two distinct spaces, a reality that Mahmood Mamdani explains in Citizen and Subject through the lens of Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ concept of the “abyssal line”.
This concept draws the boundary between the state’s formal citizens, those included in the legal, political and economic order, and subjects, whose lives are governed by indirect rule, marginalisation and conditional inclusion.
As a remnant of the 1910 Union and apartheid, Whites inhabit the citizen side: affluent, globally connected and fiercely protective of wealth. Unemployment among whites hovers below seven percent.
Rugby, elite schooling, corporate networks and international linkages reinforce continuity with the wider Anglophone world. Blacks, by contrast, are trapped in the subject space, structurally confined, underdeveloped and beholden to a system that mediates their political and economic agency. Townships and rural hinterlands supply cheap labour and act as consumption markets for the white economy, perpetuating a cycle of dependence.
Political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi once argued that South African Whites are a numerical minority but a cultural majority. One could extend this argument to economics: the white minority functions as an overarching paternal guardian of Black rule, setting the parameters of acceptable behaviour and mediating the boundaries of political autonomy.
From Pretoria to Cape Town, global whiteness exercises power not only through local institutions but also through international patronage and sanctions. Western Cape secessionist rhetoric, public rants by Rob Hersov, the DA, AfriForum and Solidariteit are all expressions sanctioned by a broader network that ensures even dissent serves to protect entrenched wealth and cultural dominance.
This dynamic is not confined to domestic politics. South Africa’s foreign policy, including its recent submission to the International Court of Justice alleging genocide by Israel in Gaza, has attracted global ire, particularly from the US. Washington’s outrage is not merely a reaction to legalistic or moral arguments; it is a reflexive attempt to discipline a country that seeks to exercise independent geopolitical judgment outside the orbit of the established Western order.
The US and its allies also sought to portray Black-led initiatives as reckless, ungovernable, and threatening to global stability. South Africa’s defiance revealed the fragility of global whiteness, exposing the reliance of the international order on narratives of white victimhood, punitive coercion, and moral universalism.
The backlash against South Africa’s ICJ submission did not remain confined to Western legal arenas; it quickly extended to broader international forums, including BRICS and Global South engagements, where the country faces subtle and violent pressures and overt hostility for asserting an independent geopolitical stance.
Economically, the White minority maintains power not through brute force but through intricate networks of ownership, finance and institutional authority. Corporations, landholdings, media and educational institutions remain disproportionately white-controlled.
While the political narrative promotes inclusive democracy, Black South Africans remain tethered to a structure that ensures their labour, consumption and political gestures ultimately serve white capital.
The Santos abyssal line is visible not only in formal legal arrangements but also in spatial and economic segregation, where one South Africa thrives and the other is confined to marginality. The social manifestations of this divide are evident. Public debates over language, school curricula, economic transformation, land reform and sports are often coded contests of power.
Black South Africans inhabit spaces where infrastructural neglect, high unemployment and persistent poverty are normalised, reflecting what Achille Mbembe describes as necropolitical subjectivities, in which entrenched structural inequalities dictate whose lives are deemed valuable and whose existences are left exposed to marginalisation, precarity and social abandonment.
Meanwhile, Whites consolidate their advantage through international linkages and intergenerational wealth transfer, positioning themselves as the arbiters of what the ‘new’ South Africa can tolerate politically, socially and culturally. Wealth, influence and access to global networks allow the white minority to shape policy outcomes, public discourse and economic priorities while appearing to respect democratic institutions.
Mamdani’s framework exposes the structural bifurcation of South Africa. Political power for Black South Africans is mediated and monitored, and their economic agency is circumscribed. Even ostensibly democratic institutions reproduce this divide by allowing symbolic representation while preserving structural inequality.
South Africa’s political economy cannot be understood solely through elections, parliamentary debates, or symbolic representation. It must be read through the lens of structural power, the Santos abyssal line, global integration and historical continuity.
Until the country confronts the transnational networks and domestic structures that buttress White economic and cultural dominance, the illusion of majority rule will remain just that: an illusion, a veneer over persistent asymmetries that define the lived experience of the 90%+ Black majority.
True sovereignty, political, economic and/or cultural, requires confronting both domestic and global power structures that maintain duality. The challenge is profound and involves dismantling the interlocking networks of influence that allow wealth, culture and political authority to remain concentrated in a small numerical minority.
Until that confrontation occurs, Thabo Mbeki’s “two South Africas” will continue to exist: one thriving, globally embedded and protected by transnational networks, the other trapped, marginalised and perpetually negotiating the conditionalities of its freedom.
The stakes extend beyond South Africa’s borders. The ICJ case, land reform and resistance to Western-aligned policies are acts of decolonisation that challenge entrenched global hierarchies.
They demonstrate the capacity of Black-led nations to assert sovereignty, even when faced with punitive measures, economic threats and orchestrated narratives of illegitimacy. Yet the persistence of the dual South Africas reveals that liberation is incomplete: the structural and transnational dimensions of whiteness remain resilient, capable of mobilising local intermediaries to maintain control and limit genuine empowerment.
The question is: Is the National Dialogue about these issues, or something else entirely?
Siyayibanga le economy!
* Siyabonga Hadebe is an independent commentator based in Geneva on socio-economic, political and global matters.
** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.