Jaspreet Kindra A remarkable feature of politics and reportage on it in South Africa is that it is dominated by two elitists – President Thabo Mbeki and the leader of the opposition, Tony Leon. Since most South Africans are poor, one would expect any self-respecting, or clever, politician to make poverty a central strategy. Instead, these two men have been preoccupied with a ping-pong match over racism. Is race central to how people relate to each other? I don’t think so. Money is the main consideration: who has it and who hasn’t.
Occasionally, the two divert to the issue of Aids where the poor get a mention. But that, apparently, is as far as it goes. Mbeki, as a leader of the African National Congress, was associated with the Reconstruction and Development Programme. The programme explicitly sought to eradicate poverty. But it was soon replaced by the policy on growth, employment and redistribution.
As Mbeki stepped out of his air-conditioned car during last year’s election campaign, I asked him how he, once a socialist, reconciled himself to thousands of people losing their jobs daily. Should the state not step in to help them? The question visibly disturbed him. Understandably so. The influence of his parents – staunch communists – could surely not disappear that easily. Mbeki responded in almost pleading tones that there were avenues through which workers could get a fair deal. Leon discovered poverty last year during visits to some of the country’s most deprived areas. I recall the disbelief in his eyes as he told us about the abysmal depths to which humanity has been reduced in this country. At least Leon got around to poverty. But I haven’t heard much from him about it since. Mbeki, prophet of the “African renaissance”, quotes Shakespeare to attack whites; Leon, who thinks opposition should merely be to oppose, is stuck in defensive mode, rising only, it seems, to defend whites. Yet we live in a country whose most pressing problems come from poverty – among them homelessness and crime. Sure, racism exists. My six-year-old niece was told by a classmate she was too black to be pretty and, by another, that one should only bond with one’s own race. But these voices, no doubt echoing parents’ prejudices, represent a minority. If one examines the enormous inequalities in South African society, it is easy to identify racial correlations. But harping on about them makes managing, and getting rid of, poverty more difficult. Racism is a receding phenomenon. When Mbeki makes racism his principal agenda item and attacks whites, he is forgetting his duty to the majority of the population which is, of course, black. And Leon, when he rises to defend whites, allows himself to be presented as the voice of the white minority only. Neither the ruling party nor the opposition has an agenda that matters to common people. The danger is that this will create a cynical and apathetic electorate. Though this need not be unhealthy in a democracy, it can lead to a loss of confidence in the political process. On this I speak from my own Indian experience. We had a Mahatma Gandhi, clad in khadi (a cloth produced by small-scale textile industries), who lived and worked among the poor. He was followed by Jawaharlal Nehru who, though Oxford-educated, preferred hitching a ride on the back of an ox-cart to air-conditioned luxury. Now all we have left is the khadi. Indian politicians wear it with zeal. But they lack the same enthusiasm for the poor. India wallows in poverty. But democracy thrives in India, because the poor see their vote as the only way of expressing displeasure with their leadership. This explains why no political party in India has recently got a two-thirds majority. South Africa had Nelson Mandela, in his African prints, dancing with the common person. No one else, however, seems to know the steps.
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