If one goes back to the Dennis Davis article in this newspaper — which led to the furious counter-attack from Human Rights Commission head Barney Pityana, and this week’s impassioned television debate — it is striking how mild his criticism was.
Davis lamented the commission’s “lack of profile” and the appointment of its members. He said these choices seemed to be reward for political services rendered and that in a case of “a couple of appointees … their knowledge of human rights was conspicuous only by its absence”.
These are not vicious remarks. They raise legitimate concerns aimed, ironically, at the white HRC members who come from rightwing apartheid backgrounds.
But Davis sparked off a huge response, a really vicious one. And it wasn’t just name- calling. It was a cry of anger from members of the new black elite that white left-leaning intellectuals are their most vocal and consistent critics.
The old conservatives are, by and large, adapting to the new South Africa by accepting the hegemony of the new power-brokers, like Pityana. They are playing the game, being as uncritical of authority and as sycophantic as always.
But the left, the traditional home of people like Pityana, is doing what it has always done: probe, criticise, argue and debate — a way of contributing to transformation which is very different from conservative aquiescence, but probably more valuable.
Is it racism? Sometimes, perhaps even often, there is an unconscious racism in it. In Davis’ case, it is patently not.
But anyone who knows Pityana is aware that he is not a person to make such remarks lightly. And his anger is shared by many intelligent, well-informed people.
Pityana can be criticised for not showing the temperance and restraint required of someone whose position is equivalent to that of a judge, but he should be thanked for bringing out into the open a simmering-under-the- surface tension.
It forces us all, black and white alike, to reconsider the assumptions we make in these debates and to be aware of the baggage we all carry from the past.