A Billboard Blitz of Bad Faith

OP-ED| Politics

What has just happened on the public roads of Johannesburg, the sudden appearance of 83 massive billboards proclaiming “Welcome to the most race-regulated country in the world” just days before the G20 summit, is not public discourse, legitimate outcry of concerned citizenry, nor even honest political criticism. It is political sabotage, a calculated humiliation campaign masquerading as commentary.

Those billboards were not erected to persuade South Africans. They were built to wound South Africa, deliberately, theatrically, at the very moment the world’s most powerful governments are descending upon Johannesburg. They were designed to hype support from international audiences by a manufactured scandal that frames South Africa’s constitutionally grounded redress policies as some kind of dystopian race-based regulations. This is not democracy in action; it is propaganda in its purest form.

The timing alone exposes the ruse. By placing the billboards along major routes leading to the Nasrec Expo Centre, the G20’s centrepiece, the intention becomes unmistakable, to create a spectacle for foreign dignitaries and global media. This is a smear campaign that doesn’t invite dialogue, but is aimed to undermine faith in South Africa’s capacity to govern itself and transform its society.

The organisation behind this stunt, Solidarity, is not new to these tactics. The union, along with its sister organisation, AfriForum, has spent years exporting its grievances abroad, lobbying in Washington and Europe, sharing memos with foreign embassies, and cultivating far-right political networks to legitimise the tired falsehood of “white persecution” in South Africa. Their campaign documents consistently portray B-BBEE and employment equity as unjust, catastrophic, and anti-white, while ignoring the simple truth that these policies exist because apartheid created a racialised economy designed explicitly to exclude Black South Africans. The laws Solidarity condemns are not acts of hostility; they are acts of justice. But justice threatens those who prefer their historical advantage to remain unchallenged. This tactic belongs to a well-documented phenomenon in political philosophy, the conversion of historical advantage into contemporary victimhood. When those who have benefited from racial domination begin to fear the loss of those advantages, they do not call it equality—they call it oppression. This moral inversion is not accidental; it is strategic. It transforms justice into threat and accountability into persecution. 

The professionalised, well-funded political operation of Solidarity and AfriForum have made an art form of internationalising internal policy debates by framing Afrikaners as an endangered minority whose salvation depends on foreign intervention. Earlier this year, a delegation involving both organisations travelled to the United States seeking support for sanctions and positioning themselves as victims of a “white genocide,” a lie that has long circulated in far-right echo chambers. To abuse Steve Biko we may state: “The oppressor’s greatest achievement is to convince himself that he is the victim.” Such rhetoric functions to shield privilege from scrutiny by cloaking it in the language of suffering. In modern terms, the philosopher Miranda Fricker calls this a form of epistemic injustice, a manipulation of credibility in which those historically advantaged claim the moral authority of the oppressed. 

By erecting these billboards just before the G20 summit, they are escalating their strategy: transforming local policy grievance into global spectacle. They want diplomats, journalists, and world leaders to see these billboards and leave with the impression that South Africa is an unstable, racially hostile state unworthy of investment, partnership, or trust. It is an astonishingly reckless gambit that jeopardises not only the government’s reputation, but the country’s economic prospects and global credibility. This is not merely political theatre but a defensive manoeuvre by the beneficiaries of old orders. In moments of transition, the beneficiaries of an old order often try to preserve their privileges by presenting themselves as the truly injured parties. This is what is quintessential trick of what is called weaponised grievance. 

Fortunately, South Africa is not the caricature Solidarity wishes the world to believe. And crucially, neither is the Afrikaner community. Earlier this year, over 40 prominent Afrikaners (theologians, writers, academics) published an open letter rejecting this narrative outright. Their words were as courageous as they were clear. They rejected the narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution and refused being made into pawns in America’s culture wars by clearly stating: Not in our name.

These leaders acknowledged the historic injustices of apartheid and affirmed their commitment to a nonracial, democratic South Africa. Their stance exposes the billboard campaign for what it is, the handiwork of a fringe determined to hijack Afrikaner identity for ideological and geopolitical gain. This dissenting Afrikaner voice must be amplified, not because it flatters government, but because it defends truth.

By internationalising a domestic policy debate, Solidarity is not exercising democratic freedom but is eroding it. When domestic actors deliberately seek foreign pressure to influence internal political decisions, they risk inviting the very forces that have historically destabilised developing democracies across the world. Once foreign actors begin to view themselves as arbiters of South Africa’s transformation, the country’s sovereignty becomes negotiable. And history teaches us that interventions built on foreign misinformation rarely ends well.

The government is right to remove illegal signage. But censorship is not the issue here; context is. South Africa must not let the claim of “free speech” overshadow the deeper problem. When speech becomes part of a coordinated disinformation campaign with foreign strategic interests, it ceases to be mere expression and becomes political subversion. A mere clean-up of public roads is not enough. The response must be strategic, not reactive.

Government should use the G20 moment to contextualise South Africa’s transformation policies, explaining why B-BBEE and employment equity remain essential for dismantling inequality and promoting inclusive growth. They must brief international media and host side events for informing about our recent past and urgent need for economic redress by presenting evidence-based data on transformation’s progress and remaining challenges. The government needs to own our national narrative and not allow Solidarity to define it. They must commission an independent review of Solidarity and AfriForum’s international activities. 

South Africans deserve to know whether foreign money or influence is being used to undermine our democratic processes. Think tanks, academics, human rights organisations, and community leaders, including Afrikaners of integrity, must coordinate a counter-narrative that dismantles the politics of victimhood and reaffirms the shared national project of transformation. The open letter from the 40+ Afrikaners should be widely circulated as evidence that this billboard campaign is not representative, not communal, and not legitimate.

Seen through this lens, the billboard campaign is not a cry for fairness but a refusal of historical responsibility—a last-ditch attempt to re-enter history as victims rather than as participants in justice. These are politics of bad faith crafted to halt transformation by feigning persecution. The billboards are not about policy. They are about power, the power to define South Africa globally, to distort its journey, to shame it into paralysis. What we are witnessing is a well-funded fringe masquerading as a civil-rights movement, using the world’s gaze, especially that of right-wing sympathisers, to peddle and weaponise grievance politics and reverse-racism mythology. 

In my opinion these acts of Solidarity constitute Hate Crimes. The Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Act, 2023 was signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa on May 9, 2024, and gazetted on May 14, 2024. But the Act is not yet in force. It will come into effect once it is officially implemented. I am not sure what is delaying the implementation.

South Africans, Black, White, Indian, Coloured, must refuse to be extras in this theatre of manipulation. The government must not respond with silence, but with principled clarity. The public must not respond with embarrassment, or anger, but with unity and truth. And the world must not be taken in by the theatrics of victimhood weaponised for political gain. This is not an argument about “race regulation.” It is a disinformation campaign dressed up as advocacy. And South Africa must call it by its proper name.