When New York’s new mayor declared that his administration should follow the South African model of governance, the remark raised eyebrows—but few people understood just how deep that idea runs in American progressive politics.

It isn’t a slogan. It isn’t a throwaway line. And it certainly isn’t new.

On Breaking Battlegrounds, Joel Pollak, opinion editor of the newly launched California Post—a seven-day-a-week digital and print newspaper debuting January 26 as a sister publication to the New York Post—explains why the American left has spent decades admiring South Africa’s constitution, how that admiration shaped policies like Obamacare, and why the results are far worse than advocates admit.

What Pollak lays out isn’t theoretical. It’s a warning grounded in history, ideology, and real-world outcomes.

Why the Left Loves the South African Constitution

According to Pollak, progressive fascination with South Africa dates back more than 30 years. The appeal lies not in symbolism, but structure.

South Africa’s constitution doesn’t just protect civil liberties like freedom of speech and religion—it guarantees socioeconomic rights, including:

  • Health care

  • Education

  • Housing

  • A “clean environment”

For the American left, this framework is seductive. It reframes government services as rights, allowing activists and courts to pressure the state into providing them.

Pollak pointed to a striking example: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who once advised countries emerging from revolution not to model their constitutions on the U.S. Constitution—but instead to follow South Africa’s.

That statement shocked many Americans. But to progressives, it made perfect sense.

When Secondary “Rights” Override Primary Freedoms

The problem, Pollak argues, is what happens next.

When governments elevate socioeconomic goals to the level of constitutional rights, they inevitably collide with core liberties—speech, religion, and conscience.

He cited the Obama administration’s conflict with the Little Sisters of the Poor, where religious freedom was subordinated to the government’s claim that health care—and specific services tied to it—was a “right” that must be universally enforced.

In short:

When everything becomes a right, real rights are the first thing to go.

Rights Without Results

Even worse, Pollak explained, declaring something a right doesn’t actually make it exist.

South Africa offers a sobering example. Despite constitutional guarantees:

  • Health care remains inaccessible for many

  • Infrastructure continues to decay

  • Environmental protections are inconsistently enforced

To paper over this failure, South African officials introduced the concept of “progressive realization”—the idea that these rights will be fulfilled eventually.

But as Pollak noted, once a government claims moral victory for granting a right, the incentive to deliver real results disappears.

You get the rhetoric.
You don’t get the service.

The Ideological Roots: Critical Race Theory

Pollak added a critical historical layer often ignored in public debate.

The intellectual architect of Critical Race Theory, Derrick Bell, believed the United States was inherently white supremacist—and that the solution lay in adopting South African-style socioeconomic rights.

That worldview now underpins:

  • DEI bureaucracies

  • Equity-based governance

  • The redefinition of inequality as constitutional failure

So when political leaders invoke South Africa as a model, Pollak argues, they’re not talking about efficiency or fairness. They’re talking about ideology—one that prioritizes narrative over outcomes and identity over effectiveness.

Why This Matters Now

As cities like New York and states like California struggle with affordability, public safety, and failing institutions, the temptation to promise everything as a “right” grows stronger.

But as Pollak warns, this model doesn’t uplift communities—it entrenches bureaucracy, undermines liberty, and ultimately delivers less of everything it promises.

The lesson from South Africa isn’t aspirational.
It’s cautionary.

Transcript

Chuck Warren: I want to go to the mayor of New York, Mamdani. He in his inaugural speech, and I say this because you’re from South Africa originally, so I’m going to ask you, you may not have an opinion on it, saying they want to set example for the world and adopt the South African model of governance. What is he talking about?

**Joel Pollak: **Well, this is really interesting. So the American left for 30 years has admired the South African constitution. In fact, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Supreme Court justice, was asked during the Egyptian revolution in the Arab Spring what advice she would give to Egyptians if they were going to write a new democratic constitution for their country. And she infamously said, don’t look to the American constitution. You should follow the South African constitution.

Now, people were shocked by that because, of course, she’s sworn to uphold the American Constitution. What the left likes about the South African Constitution is that it includes socioeconomic rights. Under the South African Constitution, you have freedom of speech, you have freedom of religion, but you also have the right to health care. You have the right to education. You even have the right to a clean environment. You have all these socioeconomic rights. And that’s what Democrats want to do in this country.

They say that everything that government should be providing for people is actually a right. And they want to use that concept of a right to hold the government accountable and force the government to provide things. But they never look at the results of this experiment in South Africa. And it turns out that when you make these socioeconomic goals into rights, then two things happen. First of all, you start infringing upon the primary rights, the civil rights, freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

We saw that with Obamacare when Obama went after Little Sisters of the Poor because they said, you can’t have your freedom of religion when it comes to abortion and contraceptives because we have to give health care as a right to everybody. So that means we have to give contraceptive pills and abortion drugs to everybody. And so there’s an infringement on the primary freedoms. And the other thing that happens is you actually don’t get the health care. You don’t get the clean environment.

And in South Africa, they try to smooth things over by saying, well, these rights, these socioeconomic rights, we can’t provide them right away, but we’re going to have them be progressively realized over time. That’s the phrase. But that doesn’t deter the American left from saying, hey, you know what? We need to have socioeconomic rights in our constitution. They don’t look at the fact that when you have health care as a right, then you don’t actually have health care because the government says, well, you know, we gave you the right to health care, so we are great. We don’t have to do anything more than that.

I would just add one other thing. The father of critical race theory, which is a topic that many in the conservative media discussed over the last several years, it’s the theory behind DEI and so many of these other things. The father of critical race theory was a guy named Derrick Bell. And Derrick Bell believed America was a white supremacist country and that the only cure for white supremacy was the South African style socioeconomic rights.

So when Mamdani says he wants to do a South African model. What he’s talking about is critical race theory. What he’s talking about is this woke style of governance, which does not produce any results for the people it’s supposed to be helping, but just introduces this ideology that over time will ruin everything.

Listen to the full episode of Breaking Battlegrounds anywhere you stream your podcasts!