Humphrey Tyler crossfire
South Africa is in serious danger of being sidetracked into a blind alley by the current “debate” on racism, quite apart from the fact that it is wasting a lot of money giving some people highly paid, totally useless jobs, maybe for life. Having kicked out the National Party because of its racist policies we’re heading back in exactly the same direction. Instead of regarding other South Africans as just people, we’re busy tying racial tags round our necks again, just like the Nats did with the last three numbers on our ID books and in the dompas, and checking people for crinkly hair. So here we go, blinded by tears, self-pity or often totally pointless and inapplicable remorse, staggering into the future backwards, the euphoria of a new beginning evaporating like a popped balloon. Bugger the rainbow. What a way to build a nation. We’ve got Poor Disadvantaged Blacks. There are, shame, The Coloureds. There are the Unhappy Browns. And there are the Shameful Whites, grimly moping around the shopping malls stricken with guilt. Everybody is sorry for himself. This newspaper even published recently an article by a writer who offered a sort of pro forma apology, an admission of guilt, for all whites to sign and for all blacks, browns and so-ons to use as an excuse for failure of any sort for evermore. Don’t blame me! I’m not responsible! Soon a minister of white affairs will be standing up in Parliament to lay down rules about the “correct” way blacks should address whites, the way the late, politically mad minister of native affairs Daan de Wet Nel once explained (how bizarre!) how white men should address blacks.
No, no. Don’t shake hands. They are “different”. Raise the right arm above the shoulder with the palm forward. Then cry “Molo!”
Come off it. For decades South Africa was on the wrong track. The white government not only denied the humanity of blacks; it was scared stiff of them. Whites would be “swamped”. So blacks were brutalised. But whites were mentally and emotionally warped, too. The country was sick. Just think what it could have been like but for National Party policies and all the money thrown away in an attempt to turn a meaningless chimera into a reality; weird political contortions that turned baaskap into apartheid and then into separate development; that turned people from Natives into Bantus and then into Plurals and then, technically – pouf! – made them disappear. Well, that was the theory anyway. Officially, in South Africa, three-quarters of the population didn’t exist. It was, well, quaint. In spite of those lunatic policies South Africa is still strong and potentially vibrant. It has a lot of lousy schools but many are improving, quite a few are very good and the country still has the best- educated population on the continent. And look at the towering black political leaders and other personalities it has thrown up in spite of repression. Is there any other country in Africa that has had as many Nobel Prize winners? I remember going to interview Chief Albert Luthuli in Johannesburg when he was passing through on his way to exile in Natal. He couldn’t meet more than two reporters at a time; three would have constituted a “crowd” which would have been an “illegal gathering” and we would all have gone to jail. So we went up the stairs to a little room in downtown Jo’burg two by two, watched by Special Branch cops. My companion at the interview was an Afrikaans reporter from the Transvaler, a rabid Nat paper at the time. The Afrikaans journalist was nonplussed. When we walked out he said: “He’s a hell of a sight better and more intelligent than our lot” – meaning members of the white Nationalist cabinet. Hey ho. And what about Robert Mangaliso (meaning “Wonderful”) Sobukwe? And Nelson Mandela. All of them blacks, and not to mention ZK Matthews and a host of others.
Sure they were “disadvantaged” but they shrugged that off and look what towering figures many became. The whole world acknowledges Mandela. Would people like that be grateful to have patronising whites say how very sorry they are for them, actually, oh shame, you poor blacks?
The point about the democratic elections of 1994 was that South Africa had the chance to rid itself of racism. People turned into people again, not racial tokens. We all had the vote! We were in the same queue! We were South Africans; not Black South Africans or White South Africans or Other Coloureds. The Nats bit the dust. We had won, dammit! We should be celebrating our freedom from imposed racial labels, and our individuality, not mourning frequently self- inflicted deficiencies and putting yellow badges on our sleeves. Sure we often do have idiotic misconceptions about one another, just like the Brits and the Frogs and the Yids and the Polaks and being a Zigaboo jockey in Yankeeland. And there certainly are bums around; they come in all colours. No single group has a monopoly. But sticks and stones and all that. Let’s grow up. Don’t waste time making full-time occupations out of being a Professional Black or a Weeping White. When the Allied armies marched into Berlin after beating the Nazis they didn’t burst into tears of self-pity. We have had some horrendous casualties. Some people suffered much more than others. Maybe some people didn’t seem to suffer at all. Injustices remain. One way or another there will be injustices probably forever. It’s human. But there are enough decent people around itching to build something much better. As a nation, we won the struggle, dammit. It took a long time and great sacrifices. But we won.
But we could lose it again, moping around guiltily in a miasma of accusations of non- defined subliminal racism. No wonder so many people are leaving in despair.
Humphrey Tyler is a freelance journalist and author of Life in the Time of Sharpeville. He worked for Drum in the Fifties and was editorial director of the World (now the Sowetan) soon after it became South Africa’s first black daily