Ashes

Jeanette, I am going to give you a very long response to address your confusion. Bear with me because I’ll start with historical origins of the usage. The terminology of “leftwing”(often it labels itself as “progressive”) and “rightwing” (often labeled “conservative” - although the true opposite of “conservative” is “liberal”) has been part of the South African political parlance at least for the past 116 years. It first appeared in South African politics when the Labour Party (1910) defined itself as “the left”. But that mettle was taken over in 1921 when the press of the day (disapprovingly) referred to the Communist Party of South Africa as a leftwing organization. But the origins of the left-right labeling harks back to the French Revolution in 1789 with the left-right seating arrangement of opposing parties in the National Assembly. In apartheid South Africa “rightwing” described hardline Afrikaner nationalists and conservatives (eg Conservative Party and AWB - sometimes referred to as the “far-right”) while “left” covered anti-apartheid, socialist, communists, and ANC-aligned forces. That is why White anti-apartheid activists referred to themselves as “White lefties” even when they didn’t necessarily subscribe to a socialist/communist ideology. Common left-wing characteristics • Prioritize economic and social equality (reducing disparities via redistribution, progressive taxation, expanded welfare, public services, and labor protections). • Favor greater government role in the economy (regulation of markets, support for unions, public ownership or strong oversight in key sectors). • Emphasize progressive social change (expanded civil rights on issues like gender, sexuality, race, and immigration; secularism or reduced traditional religious influence in public life). • Prefer international cooperation, multilateral institutions, and open borders relative to national sovereignty. • Often stress environmental protection, climate policy, and collective solutions over individual or market-driven ones. Common right-wing characteristics • Prioritize individual liberty, free markets, property rights, and limited government (lower taxes, deregulation, private enterprise, and fiscal restraint). • Emphasize tradition, social order, national identity/sovereignty, and cultural continuity (including stronger roles for religion, family structures, or national history in public life). • Favor law and order, strong national defense, and controlled immigration. • Tend toward social conservatism or skepticism of rapid cultural change on issues like gender, sexuality, and social norms. • Prefer national interests and free-market approaches over extensive redistribution or supranational governance. These are broad tendencies, not universal rules. Real-world parties (and voters) frequently mix them—for example, economically left but socially conservative, or free-market but culturally progressive. Economic left/right and cultural left/right axes often diverge, which is why simple left-right maps have limits. Labels also shift: what counts as “right” or “left” in one country or decade can differ elsewhere. For instance, it will surprise you that some of the Russian media speak of the Communist Party of Russia as being conservative (rightist) because it is fighting to conserve values of a past era, whereas in the days of the USSR the same Communist Party was the mother of all leftwing parties.