/ 28 March 2013

Andile Mngxitama the bully

Andile Mngxitama's call for Jared Sacks to be beaten up for his views undermines black consciousness discourse.
Andile Mngxitama's call for Jared Sacks to be beaten up for his views undermines black consciousness discourse.

Andile Mngxitama and Athi Joja have every right to criticise Jared Sacks for his piece on Mamphela ­Ramphele and Steve Biko ("Biko would not vote for Ramphele", March 15), but it is downright unethical for ­Mngxitama to threaten Sacks with violence – and to incite Sacks to resort to violence too – because Mngxitama did not like what he wrote.

According to a post on Mngxitama's Facebook page: "real bikoists out there, whenever we see that white little bastard called jared sacks, we must beat the shit out of him. they now pissing on biko's face. they can diss mamphela all they want, but to insult us like this? when i see jared, he must beat me up. that's the deal." He also responded to a response on his page by saying: "jared will pay for this."

We accept that it is in the nature of Facebook for people to express themselves bluntly as it is not a completely public forum. But there must be accountability for what one says, even on Facebook, particularly if one is a public figure.  People often "friend" people such as Mngxitama because of their public profile. To settle a political dispute through a physical fight, which is what Mngxitama calls for on his page (accessible to more than 5000 people) is a terrible message for a public intellectual of Mngxitama's stature to communicate.

There is already too much violence in our politics. Public intellectuals have a responsibility to denounce violence as a method of resolving political disagreements, not ­encourage it.

Such threats can be profoundly intimidating to the person they are directed against. Even if they are not meant literally, others may take them so. They also have implications for the Mail & Guardian and freedom of expression more broadly, because people who approach the paper to publish their articles may be put off if they fear being subjected to similar threats.

Anyone who wishes to put their views into the public domain should accept that others may disagree, at times fiercely, but they should not fear for their safety when they do so. This will lead to self-censorship.

Mngxitama comes across as a bully who can win arguments only by policing the boundaries of the discourse on black consciousness through intimidation, rather than robust argument. It is important that the M&G speaks on this issue as well, denouncing Mngxitama's threat of violence, to protect the freedom of its contributors and communicate a clear message that such threats are unacceptable. – Abahlali baseMjondolo, Zackie Achmat, Bheki Buthelezi, Jane Duncan, Jacques Depelchin, Nathan Geffen, Kenneth Good, Marie Huchzermeyer, Vashna Jagarnath, Ayanda Kota, Firoze Manji, Aubrey Mokoape, Michael Neocosmos, Thembani Onceya, Richard Pithouse, Unemployed Peoples' Movement


I was angered, but not surprised by Mngxitama and Joja's letter in response to Sacks. When I first heard about their New Frank Talk publication some years ago, I was keenly interested: many had remarked on the need for a strong black consciousness movement post-1994.

On returning to South Africa, I bought and read every copy I could find. Although there was some interesting, novel and lucid analysis, almost every edition contained gratuitous anti-white bigotry. Over the years, I have seen this repeated in Mngxitama's articles and Facebook posts: whites are racist, whites must sleep with the dogs, whites are pigs …

My first thought was that it was an act for the coterie of angry black youth he was luring as followers. That would be bad enough: cynically advocating hatred simply to attract followers. Increasingly, however, it has become clear that these are real sentiments.

Mngxitama does not hate racist white people, he hates nonracist white people. He hates white people who are committed to social justice in South Africa. Racist whites fit his views, but left-wing whites doing community work (as Sacks does) show his bigotry up for what it is.

I have concerns about "­positionality" when white people do such work, but the issue is hardly clear cut. One might ask Mngxitama, as I did in an email to him in 2010: "Who made you the Black messiah?"

Now one could ask: "Who made you the guardian of Biko's legacy?" The answer is evident: Mngxitama is the self-anointed custodian of Biko and representative of blackness.

Mngxitama's real tragedy is that he understands the substance and complexity of Frantz Fanon's analysis in Black Skin, White Masks, of the damaging consequences on the black psyche of the historical construction of white supremacy, but he is either unable or unwilling to transcend his own victimhood. – Sean Muller, Cape Town