acknowledged
Sechaba ka’Nkosi crossfire
A close friend, Muff Anderson, last year asked me to testify in a civil suit she had instituted against a black colleague. It was a typical office disagreement where the colleague had resorted to calling her a racist. Muff rightfully felt offended. And for a person I had related to as an equal outside the racial prejudices of a country we both called our own the request did not sound unreasonable. I was willing to face the judge and tell him or her that the Muff I had known for some time could never have been a racist. Fortunately, after some talks, sense prevailed and the colleague apologised. Muff decided to drop the case. Later Muff told me her opting for the courts of law was not because she had any point to prove but because her colleague had behaved arrogantly and refused to apologise. Muff’s mission was simple – to clear her name and set the record straight. She knew there was a just war that needed to be fought at whatever cost and once she realised that her enemy was shaking, she came with an alternative plan. That is called maturity and that is what is lacking as we all try to battle with our shameful past.
Muff is one of a very few South Africans I can certainly call free of the racism paranoia that has gripped the country in the wake of the Human Rights Commission conference on racism in Johannesburg. I found Muff a rare species in an arrogant community that behaves as if it is under siege.
Beyond the public spat lies a nation still divided between black and white – a South Africa in which black people suffered collective humiliation that requires an equally collective acknowledgement from white South Africa. We may have the best laws in our Constitution, but they may not be enough to deal with the scourge. Our attitudes first have to change. In a country dominated by fear, deep mistrust and condescending attitudes it is perhaps not surprising that white South Africa saw any discussion on racism as a collective affront by the black elite. Our miracle-negotiated revolution sacrificed restitution on the altar of reconciliation – former president Nelson Mandela being the unifying symbol for our “feelgoodness” at the time. But the confetti has settled and the rose-coloured lenses are off. In reality, most black South Africans see the way much of their white counterparts look at them as no better than before. That President Thabo Mbeki is not like Mandela has become a lament around dinner tables. Mandela allowed some people to sleep easily in their beds at night, safe in the knowledge that they had got away with it. It would hardly be emotional to state that many of the accolades from white South Africa towards him were because he had shown little interest in calling them to account – either in the form of apology or otherwise. Mbeki on the other hand is seen as an unrepentant Africanist bent on driving the country into the abyss. Papers were circulated at the conference proving how determined Mbeki’s two-nation theory was to do such. Yet what was deliberately omitted from the discussions was the fact that white Zimbabwe still saw itself as Rhodesia after April 18 1980 – a racial division later to be manipulated by the country’s beleaguered President Robert Mugabe every time an election loomed. They also retreated to their own laagers in the suburbs and continued to shun any association with their black counterparts. They braaied and focused on every little mistake the new government was making. They shunned social spots that had a large black patronage.
South Africans, like Rhodesians, seem to have forgotten in their isolation that on the map there lies an area called Katlehong. That the severance of contact with the community was a recipe for assumptions that in Katlehong there are ordinary human beings who live and laugh the same was they do. And that to wish them away could breed mistrust and discord that may be difficult to contain in the future. This sycophancy and patronising attitude which white South Africa continues to use to ease its collective conscience has the good black over for tea while the garden boy has to eat out of a tin plate at the back.
In the same way certain political parties deflect attention from their own policies by arguing that racism among blacks themselves is also a problem and attempt to break down the equation by labelling the discussion on racism an attempt to punish white South Africa. Truth and Reconciliation Commission chair Desmond Tutu, a rather rational and level- headed person, once made an emotional appeal on national television for white South Africa to come to terms with the past and acknowledge its effect on other people’s lives. Tutu said there would be relief in hearing people narrating their past and being listened to and believed. Ours is a nation with permanent scars. I believe that in a country where we had accepted a need for a frank discussion on racism, last week’s conference could have provided us with an opportunity to look back and calculate the strides we have made in the past six years. But we failed dismally and instead engaged in a public spat about who is more racist than who at the expense of a much-needed national debate.
To dismiss and demonise any discussion on our differences is tantamount to saying our past effectively ceased to haunt us on April 27 1994. The basic law of nature suggests that not until a problem has been identified and acknowledged can there be a meaningful attempt to solve it.