Ivo Vegter: Why I didn't write about the White House circus

Key topics:Defends classical liberalism: individual liberty, free markets, small stateAvoids trending topics; seeks unique angles and underexplored issuesCritiques both left and right, aiming to challenge popular narratives.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Ivo Vegter*.I often get questions about why I cover this thing, but not that thing, or why I write about international politics when there is so much to write about in South Africa.The question of what to write about is a question I have to answer to myself twice a week. There are, of course, a myriad of possible topics. Current events happen fast and furiously, both in South Africa and abroad.But I am not a news reporter. I write opinion. Specifically, I write opinion that seeks to explore the principles of a free society, and I’ve done so since I started writing columns 20 years ago..Classical liberalism.Allow me, for clarity, to define these principles explicitly.Often described as classical (as opposed to social or left-wing) liberalism, the touchstone of these principles is self-ownership. Equivalently, the core principle of a free society is property rights. (For a good explanation of this idea, I refer you to Human Rights are Property Rights, written in 1959 by Murray N. Rothbard.)From this axiom it follows that people ought to be maximally free to pursue their own interests and live their lives how they choose, provided they do not violate the corresponding rights and liberties of others in doing so.It also implies equality before the law. Individual freedom and equality before the law together imply non-racialism, non-discrimination and tolerance for people who are different or who make different choices.Individual freedom applies to social, political, and economic life. An ideology based on individual freedom is therefore distinct from both the right and the left. The right is usually (but not always) liberal on economics, but is often authoritarian and conservative on social issues and nationalistic in politics. The left is usually liberal on social and political matters, but authoritarian and collectivist on economics. Both sides, therefore, tend towards authoritarianism in one way or another.I’ve always felt classical liberalism is neither right nor left, but lives on an orthogonal axis between authoriarianism and individual freedom..Role of government.The proper role of government is to maintain institutions that establish and protect individual rights, to maintain (and subject itself to) the rule of law, and to provide for a common defence.Government, being an imposition on individual freedom whenever its scope expands beyond its core functions, ought to be small and restrained. Its powers ought to be limited, and law ought in general to be written and interpreted narrowly, rather than broadly and open-endedly..Read more:.Rewriting politics from the ground up: The rise of civic governance in South Africa.Since government derives its powers by delegation from the rights of individuals, it requires the consent of the governed. The main problem of politics is not how to choose leaders but how to restrain them once they have power. That is why democracy must be restrained by a sacrosanct constitution that guarantees the people’s individual rights and freedoms – not from other people, but from the government..Constitutional democracy.This makes constitutional democracy the preferred political system, and it makes rule by decree antithetical to a free society.A direct consequence of private property rights and individual freedom is the belief that free markets with only a light-touch regulation are the best way to allocate scarce resources to optimally service our wants and needs. As a rule, government intervention in markets makes them less efficient, not more efficient.Since governments can only confiscate property created by individuals (tax) and deploy it in a way those individuals would not have chosen to do (public spending), governments do not create wealth; they destroy wealth. In limited cases, that might be a sacrifice worth making, but it is always a sacrifice, and should always be up for public discussion.Central planning is a poor substitute for markets. I’ll let Ludwig von Mises explain the problem of Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that these principles are not always entirely consistent. A commitment to individual liberty conflicts with the idea of granting coercive powers to government. Free markets conflict with regulation, whether or not it can be described as “light-touch”. Private property rights conflict with the need for even a small government to establish infrastructure (and even expropriate property) to fulfil its core functions.These principles, by way of a lengthy introductory detour, establish a foundation for what I choose to write about, and why..Echo chamber.I tend to shy away from topics that a lot of other people are writing about. Often, current events fall into this category. If everyone is writing about, say, the budget, or some newly passed law, then it becomes less likely that I have anything interesting to add, and my publication schedule makes it equally unlikely that I’ll be the first to say it.Given that I have only two columns a week, I want to devote them to ideas that are not just echoes of what everyone else is already saying.A topic becomes much more attractive to me if I can come up with a unique angle that I think most other reporters and commentators have missed, or if I can correct a misperception in the popular media.I like to challenge popular beliefs that I hold to be mistaken. I like to question junk or pop science. I like to confront what I believe to be politically misguided or toxic ideas.I also like topics that are instructive with regard to the principles I set out earlier. It might not matter directly to me whether some country passes a particular law on vaping, or jaywalking, or website age verification, or trade tariffs, or cigarette packaging, or internet filters, or pandemic lockdowns, but each of those cases can be an opportunity to learn, and serve as a cautionary tale in our own country..Unpopular opinions.Sometimes, the principles of individual liberty and free markets lead to conclusions that are widely unpopular. When the media, politicians and the general public were widely denouncing so-called price-gouging at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, I wrote an article on the economic function of rising prices in an emergency (namely that they signal to producers to produce more, and signal to consumers to economise).Daily Maverick refused to publish it, ostensibly to protect me from the public who would “tear you to shreds”, so I had to publish the column elsewhere. This was the final straw that precipitated my decision to move my column to the Daily Friend.When government responded to the pandemic with a brutal lockdown, I was highly critical of the response. When vaccines became available, I made myself very unpopular with lockdown critics by supporting them, not only on the scientific merits, but also because they offered a way out of the tyranny of lockdown restrictions..Squirrel and Donnie.As another example, let’s consider the recent television extravaganza held by US President Donald Trump when he hosted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House.I could write a column about how Trump ambushed Ramaphosa by surprising him with a video of the violent and racist rhetoric of Julius Malema and other hard-left firebrands. But the BBC, Channel 4, France 24, The Telegraph, Sky News, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, CNBC, Bloomberg, and the New York Post, among others, all used the word “ambush”. News24 called it an “assault”.Why would I waste one of my only two columns in a week saying what everyone else had already said?I’d rather write a column about the fact that it wasn’t really an ambush. Ramaphosa and his team should have seen this coming a mile away, and should have been fully prepared with specific responses to all the talking points Trump would inevitably use.But a paragraph does not a column make, so I didn’t write about that.I could have picked on any number of inaccuracies and oddities, on both sides.For Trump to believe the white crosses he showed were actual “burial sites”, as he called them, he would have had to believe that in South Africa we bury our dead not on graveyards, like normal people, but on one long line by the side of the road, using identical white crosses as grave markers, like they do for fallen soldiers..Fake news.Trump showed a memorial and protest action, staged for the cameras, and claimed it was actual footage of people visiting actual graves. He blamed others for fake news, while falling for it himself.Trump relied on a sheaf of anecdotal accounts of crimes against white people, many from highly dubious sources, whereas any political leader who cared about the facts would have relied on well-researched statistical data before attacking another head of state in front of the world’s television cameras.Trump could have informed himself about the nature of the protest he was showing. It happened five years ago, and Gabriel Crouse reported at the time that it was a multiracial affair, involving 500 crosses (and not over 1000 “burial sites”, as Trump averred), and called for “a general reduction of crime, corruption and maladministration”.I could have written all that, but News24 has already done so.That’s not to say farm murders aren’t real, or aren’t serious, of course. But the least Ramaphosa could have done was explain that the frequency of farm murders has decreased by some 75% since its peak more than 20 years ago. He should have had this table on hand, in which the Transvaal Agricultural Union analyses farm attacks between 1 January 1990 and 31 January 2025:.I could have written about that, but I already did so, a week ago..Angola.I could have chosen to write about Ernie Els, who touchingly expressed his loyalty to the country, before thanking Trump for America’s support in the war in Angola. Like, what?He’s 18 months my senior. If he fought in the border war, which ended on my 19th birthday in 1990, he played his cards wrong.Given that he won the South African Amateur Stroke Play Championship in 1989, and turned professional the same year before winning his first professional tournament, the Southern Africa Tour, in 1991, where did he get time to play soldiers in Angola?Maybe he did, but even then, why bring it up now, in this context?.Read more:.Adapt or die: ANC’s political evolution in South Africa – Viv Vermaak.Meanwhile, Rupert launched into a weird attack on John Steenhuisen, and Retief Goosen emphasised how unsafe South Africa really is.Such nitpicking seems like a flimsy premise for an entire column, however, and Ramaphosa has already admitted that the group “could have been briefed better”. You don’t say..Transparent ploy.It might have been interesting to remark that for Ramaphosa to bring along golfers Els and Goosen, and billionaire Johann Rupert, was a transparent ploy to curry favour, produce living white Afrikaners, appeal to Trump’s love of golf, and even appeal to his racial prejudices.Assuming that Trump is this easily manipulated suggests a certain level of contempt for Trump.But Joel Pollack, editor-at-large at Breitbart News and one-time favourite to become US ambassador to South Africa, already pointed this out.I could have added that Trump totally vindicated Ramaphosa’s ploy. As any other world leader (Putin and Xi included) will tell you, he really is easily manipulated. Stroke his ego, appeal to his interests, flatter him with famous people, and show him dollar signs, and he’ll eat out of your hand.Trump was charmed no end by Els, Goosen and Rupert. In fact, it wasn’t until the white people got to speak, starting with Steenhuisen – who made an admirable cameo – that Trump began to give the impression that he was willing to listen.Again, though, that’s hardly worth an entire column (and would have invited more deranged accusations that I was motivated merely by Trump Derangement Syndrome.).Chutzpah.I might have commented on the chutzpah shown by Ramaphosa when he intercepted a media question directed at Trump, risking Trump’s temper by offering to answer what would convince Trump that “white genocide” is not happening in South Africa.“It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends like those who are here. When we have talks between us around a quiet table it will take President Trump to listen to them. I’m not going to be repeating what I’ve been saying. I would say if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my Minister of Agriculture; he would not be with me. So it will take President Trump listening to their stories, to their perspective. That is the answer to your question.”That was smooth. And it showed that despite not being Trump’s equal in diplomatic terms, Ramaphosa could match him in what one might call the art of the deal.But Tim Cohen, in his must-read newsletter, Loose Cannon, said all this better than I can, already..Embarrassment.I might have written that for all the embarrassment of being exposed on the international stage having to explain South Africa’s unacceptably high crime rate, and obsequiously begging the Americans for technology to help with the fight against crime (as if the organisational dysfunction of the SAPS and NPA aren’t to blame), the White House meeting could have gone a lot worse.But there are plenty articles already, either declaring it a victory for South Africa, or a stern rebuke. It was both, and other than that it didn’t completely close the door on future US-SA cooperation, it produced a lot of heat, but not much light.What was notably lacking was any substantive commitment on the part of the South African delegation to pro-growth reforms. There was some vague gesturing about how we need growth, and how both sides can benefit from trade and investment, but that’s government propaganda boilerplate. They never lead to actions.That would have made a good column, but to be honest, I stole that idea from someone else.Trump, for his part, pressed Ramaphosa only on the fairly narrow issue of “white genocide”, whereas it would have been far more useful if he had extended his interrogation to matters of substantive economic and foreign policy.He glossed over the International Court of Justice case against Israel, and didn’t even mention South Africa’s close ties to Russia, China and, most inexplicably, Iran..Choosing a topic.This article is less a comment on the White House meeting than an attempt to give some insight into how I approach selecting topics to write about. I can’t write about everything. I have varied interests, although sometimes a particular avenue of research or current events dominate my topic selection for a while.I wrote a lot about shale gas drilling between 2012 and 2014. I wrote a lot about Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021.Trump’s “flooding the zone” strategy and government by decree provides rich pickings for instructive political analysis that illustrate important points of principle, but I can’t get to half the issues I think are worth an article.Meanwhile, I also want to write a critique of the Department of Government Efficiency, and to what extent the idea would be useful in South Africa, have a look at the history of free markets in pre-colonial Africa, rip into a couple of bad science papers I came across recently, take a second look at “forever chemicals”, cover some updates on vaping policy, and take on the question of whether high-tech export restrictions hinder or help Chinese technology development.I also want to do a deep dive on intellectual property, because that’s a topic on which I have never managed to form a coherent view, which makes it interesting to me..Shower thoughts.But all that will have to wait for another day. Ultimately, the decision on which topic I’ll pull from my very lengthy to-do list depends on how I feel of a morning.After all, I don’t have a beat. I don’t have an editorial agenda other than the political stance I openly advocate. Nobody tells me what to write, or pays me to write particular things. I don’t have an obligation (or the ability) to cover everything that is of interest.So, selecting topics to write a column on is not easy, and I usually give it a lot of thought. But if I come up with an unusual, interesting or instructive angle, or a few punchy sentences in the shower, that can easily decide my topic for the day..*Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist, columnist and speaker who loves debunking myths and misconceptions, and addresses topics from the perspective of individual liberty and free markets..This article was first published by DailyFriend and is republished with permission

Ivo Vegter: Why I didn't write about the White House circus

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