Mike Berger A SECOND LOOK The issues of race and racism in our public life seem inescapable. Yet ordinary South Africans manifest an amazing ability to relate to one another as members of the same human family; often much more so than would be suggested from the content of the media.
Nevertheless, it is clear from modern history that all semblance of the social contract may be swept aside by racial and other group-based hatreds. To avoid this fate for our nascent democracy in a riven continent, we will need to recognise at least two important facts. The first is that “blacks” – using this term colloquially to mean mostly black African but including other persons of colour – have suffered an enormous injury stretching over centuries at the hands of whites, which colours, in complex ways, black perceptions of current “reality”. Secondly, whites too carry a complex emotional burden made up of notions of superiority, anxiety, guilt and anger. This, like the dark side of the black unconscious, can manifest in racist behaviour.
Much of the political debate and media reportage widens the racial divides in this country. Yet at the same time failure to acknowledge the reality and effects of these divisions is a form of censorship. None of the ways forward are easy and virtually all require some act of transcendence, individual or collective. Specifically, I propose that an apology and reparations from the white community could be a critical step on the way to becoming a functional nation. In essence, South African whites must acknowledge the exploitation and oppression inherent in colonialism and, more particularly, in the policy of apartheid. And surely it should also include acknowledgement of a special obligation to assist in repairing the harm caused to all persons of colour in this country. I would suggest that this obligation could be met by the payment of reparations, possibly linked to income and wealth, by the “white” community.
Reparations, as I envisage them, would not be punitive in nature – and should even be voluntary. They would not substitute for economic and social policies designed to improve the competitiveness of South Africa in the global community and quality of life in this country. Their purpose would be to kickstart specific programmes of upliftment for the black community. The collection and disposal of such funds should be wholly transparent, supervised by a non-political panel drawn from all sections of the population, and would be based upon debate carried out in the public domain. The counter-arguments deserve careful analysis to decide whether proposals are morally justifiable, logically coherent and politically practical. The first counter-argument is that colonialism, and even apartheid, were simply expressions of the deficient social morality of the time and thus no special moral blame can be attached to these actions.
Similarly, we encounter the objection to singling out European colonialism and apartheid for special moral opprobrium. What about well-documented black-on-black massacres? Or white-on-white, for that matter? There is hardly a people alive today who do not bear some collective guilt for crimes past. A further objection is that colonialism and apartheid were the only means of bringing technologically primitive and scientifically illiterate peoples into the modern era. The very strength of South Africa relative to the rest of Africa lies in the prolonged European occupation and domination. On a different tack is the objection to apologising for events in which many whites were not involved or which they actively opposed. Why should such people be collectively stigmatised with the sins of others?
While it is impossible to deny some elements of truth in all these claims, the question remains whether they constitute a reason for withholding an apology. Such denial would amount to a rejection of moral responsibility or, at best, an acceptance of a watered-down version. Given this position, apartheid merits nothing more than an expression of regret at “collateral” damage. Certainly the counter-arguments do call for a more nuanced and less selective reading of history than generally appears in our public discourse. But it is hard to see why the ubiquitous nature of man’s inhumanity to man should constitute a reason for withholding an apology for the incontrovertible reality that slavery and colonialism (including its malign, modern form, apartheid) entailed enormous cruelty, the denial of dignity and basic human rights to millions of black Africans and the other non-European peoples of this continent. Whatever the contributions of others to this sad history, it is the European nations who led the scramble for Africa over the past one-and-a-half centuries.
There is no doubt that within the white community of today personal guilt for apartheid is very unequally shared. But the apology envisaged is a collective one; we would be acting as representatives of all Europeans, dead or alive – personally responsible or not – in voluntarily assuming the weight of culpability and the task of making amends. Besides these morally based objections to an apology, which do not seem to me persuasive, there are a further set of pragmatic counter-arguments. These assume the following form: an apology of this nature, even if logically and morally justifiable, would be meaningless and even counter-productive. The potent racial memory of past oppression cannot be palliated by empty gestures, as an apology may be perceived or designated. Additionally, the deep sense of racial injury will inevitably be cultivated for its desirable economic and political spin- offs for black elites living in South Africa. The entire debate around racism and an apology is, according to this view, simply a means of immobilising whites and depriving them of equal citizenship. These arguments have a certain force but to accede to them would deny the human capacity for transcendence and fall prey to a form of circular, self-fulfilling logic. It would make any step against racism futile, and would guarantee that the racial polarisation in this country is played out to its bitter end.
I would argue that the solution lies in using the islands of sanity and goodwill referred to earlier. Reality dictates that collective perceptions cannot change overnight. Nor can we exclude the operation of simple self-interest in maintaining such divisions raw. But my argument rests on the proposition that a powerful act of transcendence from whites can set the stage for similar actions from other sections of the South African community. Furthermore, it would be desirable to take the process out of the hands of government-inspired bodies and put it back into the ownership of the ordinary people. It clearly will not be enough on its own; it hardly needs be said that all avenues towards bridging the racial divide must be used, including the urgent demand for economic reconstruction.. WH Auden, in his poem 1st September 1939, put it this way: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. An apology and reparations are not the whole answer: I wish to argue that they are definitely part of the answer.