The Davis/Pityana debate: The M&G has received a flood of letters on the issue, some of which appear below
Peter du Preez, UCT Psychology Department
YES, there are whacky liberals who believe they are without prejudice and prove it by condescending to those they are definitely not prejudiced against. There are also people who call themselves scientists and believe in perpetual motion machines, economists who believe in free markets and anthropologists who believe in noble savages. It is silly to use these facts to discredit science, economics and religion.
What Margaret Legum says about “white liberals” (M&G March 15 to 21) is an accurate description of a well-known breed, found not only here but in the United Kingdom. The Cambridge version was described some time ago: They believe that the surest way to get other people to look up to them is to look down on themselves. There’s no way to attack these people. You tell them they are exploiters and they agree brightly. They chalk it up to their credit. They believe they are without prejudice and racism because … well, because they listen to disadvantaged people so terribly nicely and patiently.
But there is another liberalism that is important, a liberalism which needs to be rescued from the “white liberals” so accurately portrayed by Margaret Legum. This liberalism is not white. To call it “white” is a propaganda trick of the sort practised by Hitler in speaking of “Jewish finance”.
Liberalism is a sceptical and sober programme based on a deep appreciation of human fallibility. Far from lacking a coherent critique of racism, it recognises the power and influence of racial and other interests. But to recognise the influence of race or class on our thinking and practice does not imply that we submit to these influences or form our political parties in such a way that their influence is increased.
It is for this reason that liberals have avoided the easy way to power, the heady appeals to race and ethnicity, and have pursued such modest and limited aims as the limitation of government by checks and balances. It is also this scepticism which has led liberals to prefer reform to revolution.
Liberals don’t believe in final solutions. They are pragmatists. They want institutions that increase human freedom. They have worked for freedom of religion, universal suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and human rights. Pestilential people!
Think of the alternatives to liberalism. One is nationalism. Indeed, it has a coherent approach to race and ethnicity. Use them to gain power! Nationalism is an immense force for liberation and an instrument of tyranny once liberation has been achieved.
Then there is communism. It also has a coherent approach to class conflict and to racism (often regarded as a disguised form of class conflict). Like nationalism, it is a tremendous force for liberation and an instrument of tyranny.
And what about liberalism? Liberals seek to reduce ethnic, racial and class divisions by carefully thought-through institutional changes. By levelling the playing fields they hope to reduce inequality. They make small promises. Blood, sweat and tears will be required. They hope to change ruthless social conflict into regulated competition by suitable rules and institutions.
Liberals are often regarded as valuable allies in the time of struggle and serious nuisances in the time of victory. Liberals are people of all classes and races who take promises of greater freedom seriously and often profoundly irritate their new masters. It is easy to cast them off by identifying them with the whacky people described by Margaret Legum.
Fortunately, South Africa has many liberals and they do not all belong to the same party. If that were the case, we would have to despair. Many members of the African National Congress are liberals. They believe in human rights, the rule of law, and the extension of human freedom — not “black” freedom, as would a nationalist party. They believe in transparent and accountable government.
The worst thing that we could possibly do is to think of liberalism as “white” and the next worst thing would be to think of it as the property of one party — the Democratic Party. That would be the worst trick of repentant “white liberals” and would condemn liberalism to death. The DP is a good party and a good home for some liberals, but the ANC is an even better home for many others.
Do not allow people to discredit liberalism by identifying it with whiteness. Be a liberal member of whatever party you belong to — in the sceptical, optimistic and yet pragmatic sense I have tried to describe here.
# Criticise, but do it carefully
Judy and Julian Cooke, Kalk Bay
WE watched the Barney Pityana/Dennis Davis debate on Tuesday’s Focus with a mixture of indignation and pain. It was easy to identify with Davis: he is so blatantly not a racist, in the common understanding of the word. His whole enterprise over the last decade or so has been to counter racism. Less easy to sympathise with Pityana, who was calling this person of transparent integrity and goodwill the worst name in the book, and who himself used, and emphasised, the classic stereotyping phrase — “you people”.
But we also had an uneasy feeling that Pityana had a point. There is a certain arrogance in the assumption Davis made, that in this fledgling democracy not two years old, he is entitled to criticise freely its new institutions.
The great lesson of our president is that we must be particularly careful about how we criticise. It is basic that we show respect for our new leaders, that we take into account the views of other people with a stake in the issue, that we elicit positives as well as negatives.
It was very hard of Pityana to call Davis a racist, but instead of Davis getting all indignant and self-righteous, it would have been better had he expressed his horror at being perceived as racist, apologised for anything he had said that might have been construed as racist, and worked to bridge the gap in understanding.
None of this is to say that we should not criticise, but in the present context it must be done with great care. In the future, as we all become more robust in our new country, the need for such care will gradually diminish.
# Davis’s paradigm is racist
Dr Lynette Dreyer, social specialist, Sunnyside, Pretoria
THE debate around racism on TV3 between Dennis Davis and Barney Pityana (and also elements of the Makgoba affair) point to a deeper level in the meaning of racism which is seemingly not understood by white male liberals or yet clearly articulated by black males.
It has much less to do with skin colour than with thinking systems that have come about because of socialisation as a white or a black.
What the Pityanas seem to be saying is that, because of the socialisation of white males in South Africa (upbringing, education, Eurocentrism, experience of dominance as a group in society, and so on), white males have a paradigm from which they argue. This paradigm leads them to conclusions that would differ from the conclusions reached through an Africanist (or any other) paradigm.
In practice this ends up by saying, for example, that black people may rule, but provided they rule in the same way that liberal white men would rule. This is racist because it does not leave scope for others to exercise their own style developed through their own paradigm, or even accept that there are other valid styles that may produce better results in the end.
The inclusion of a previously conservative (anti-human rights) white male in the Human Rights Commission seems good sense in terms of Africanist values, which seek to find reconciliation and understanding by deliberately putting opposites together. (Remember, the HRC is governed by a law with specific requirements as well.) This is understandably a nonsensical situation for a white male liberal who would want to fill the HRC with proven human rights proponents.
This may be why Pityana correctly chastised Davis for not waiting to see results produced by the HRC before criticising. In terms of this oversimplified example, it would seem no sense at all to an Africanist to limit membership of the HRC to long-standing human rights proponents, as it would duplicate what is already there and exclude others who could add valid insights (and themselves adjust their paradigms by exposure to the HRC).
The point has been often made that white males must accept they are no longer in control — and this includes control over systems of logic. True non-sectionism (including non- racism) means being able to transcend your own system of logic or, at least, waiting to see what other systems produce.
# Liberal media avoid the real issues
Mxolisi Notshulwana, Pennsylvania, United States
ANY rational-thinking being can understand Barney Pityana’s “Row over ‘racist liberals'” and your liberal institution (M&G February 23 to 29). There seems to be a selective promotion of certain liberal personalities in your paper, and an inability to respond sensitively to the problems that face the majority of the people in South Africa. Furthermore, the ambivalence of many people for your kind of journalism stems from your “cynical disregard for the efforts of our democratic dispensation”.
Moreover, it is your commitment to sensationalising change that is particularly sickening, at the expense of communicating understanding of it, and its failure to persevere in the careful articulation of truth rather than rhetorical and opinionated journalism. The problem seems to be clear once it is stated and recognised, and so must the fact that liberal media’s avoidance of “real” issues (like changing the racial make-up of M&G) derives from a perverse set of priorities concerning their brand of liberal journalism.
# Name-calling as a substitute for debate
Msizi Kuhlane
‘I NO longer see any role for myself as a political commentator and critic.” — Dennis Davis.
This is not about to be a defence of Dennis Davis. I think he is perfectly capable of defending himself. This I hope to be a defence of democracy, of a culture of debate in particular.
It was tragic to read the statement from Davis, for it signalled, regrettably, a victory for a sector of the growing black elite in positions of power. It signalled an entrance of our own little Chilubas, running around putting people into little psychological prisons of racisms and unpatriotisms.
Most interesting in Pityana’s “systematic analysis” of Davis’s article was how he systematically failed to address an essential issue in Davis’s criticism. Pityana, judging from the TV debate, seemed to know quite clearly who were the two members of the commission who had no track record of human rights, a flipside of the Dugard omission he took so personally. He doesn’t even begin to defend his two colleagues. Maybe it is because he knows that their record is truly the opposite of human rights defence.
Pityana’s response sadly intends to dismiss his critic out of the debate instead of engaging him. He does so by labelling him racist. This has been the standing response by some (I stress some) blacks in positions of power to critics.
That kind of response hardly surprises me; he is an example of the sickening sign of our times: a group of blacks in power or in the elite who engage in simplistic black and white politics. A heavy blow to a culture of debate so essential to safeguarding democracy.
If Davis is a racist, which may be true, I beg Pityana to trace for the public his racist behaviour. If Davis is a liberal, which Pityana admits to being himself on the TV debate, they are in the same boat. So if we dismiss liberals, which I think they deserve, it should be on the basis of glaring inadequacies and limitations of liberal ideology and not on the accident of skin colour at birth.
I am still to discover the reason why Pityana calls Davis a racist except for the sole purpose of dismissing him without engaging him, and entrenching himself in power.