Mascocracy over Democracy

Résumé

This chapter interrogates the racial politics of the Democratic Alliance (DA) under Helen Zille’s leadership, arguing that the party has institutionalized a form of cosmetic decolonization which is a symbolic performance of transformation that preserves the substance of white liberal dominance. By elevating select Black figures to visible positions of leadership, the DA manufactures an image of inclusivity that conceals the persistence of structural racial hierarchies within its ideological and organizational foundations. This strategic deployment of Black representation functions as a legitimising façade enabling the party to present itself as racially progressive while retaining control within a white-centric liberal framework. The chapter conceptualizes this phenomenon as mascocracy over democracy a political masquerade that prioritizes aesthetic representation over substantive equality. In this context, racial diversity becomes an instrument of political branding rather than a mechanism of redistribution or empowerment. The DA’s project of cosmetic colonialism thus reproduces the symbolic order of apartheid in the idiom of liberal democracy, translating whiteness into rationality, discipline and civility, while commodifying Blackness as performative inclusion. Drawing on postcolonial theory, particularly the works of Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha and Achille Mbembe, the chapter concludes that the DA’s politics of non-racialism is not an antidote to racial domination but a sophisticated continuation of it rebranding colonial hierarchies through the rhetoric of equality. The result is a hollow democracy, where masks of diversity obscure the entrenchment of white liberal power. In exposing this masquerade, the chapter contributes to a broader critique of South Africa’s post-apartheid liberal order and its failure to achieve genuine decolonial transformation.

Citer ce document

Accès au document

Ce document est hébergé sur son dépôt institutionnel d'origine.

Auteur(s)

Statistiques

Consultations : 1

Téléchargements : 0