Some South Africans get so much from polarisation that they cannot imagine a future without it. The “Declaration of Commitment by White South Africans” initiated by Carl Niehaus and Mary Burton is a case in point. During December it provided journalists with copy, politicians with limelight.
On one level, it is hard to see why — it is almost a statement of the obvious. It says that the white community is responsible for apartheid because “many” (not “all”) supported it and all benefited from it. It adds that apartheid’s legacy persists in attitudes of white superiority and black inferiority — it regrets this and commits the signatories to using their skills to make amends.
What is there here that the average suburbanite would find difficult to sign? Since, as Niehaus pointed out recently, there are no longer any whites who favoured apartheid, why do some find it offensive to make the obvious point that the system was created by whites so that they could hoard goodies at the expense of blacks and that all whites were advantaged by it, whether or not they supported it?
Why then did headline writers (including this newspaper) hurry to label the document a confession of white “guilt” when it is at pains to avoid that word? And why did the Democratic Alliance, which claims to reject apartheid, hasten to denounce it? Because both, for different reasons, are more comfortable with polarisation than with the narrowing of our divisions.
Like many political documents, the declaration does not derive its importance from what it says, but from what it means, which, in politics, is not always the same. Its real importance lies less in its precise wording than in the fact that it signals a willingness by some South Africans to do something that offers us our only hope of escaping our divisions a willingness to step outside the confines of group solidarity. And in its recognition that, since whites created the problem in the first place, no one will step outside their laagers unless we do so first.
And if that is beyond the ken of headline writers schooled in the journalistic theory that claims that conflict is more likely to sell papers than harmony, it is anathema to politicians whose future depends on precisely the polarisation that the declaration seeks to erode. It does not require a “hand-wringing apologist” (Marthinus van Schalkwyk’s term) to recognise that we remain a divided society a cursory look at the local election results will confirm that.
Logic tells us that our divisions impose great costs upon us cultural, moral and economic since they prevent us seizing opportunities and divert our attention from our challenges. A look at other divided societies tells us that we are heading for stagnation or worse unless the contending groups can recognise the limits of their own position and the need to recognise, in part, that of the other.
We have progressed because Nelson Mandela recognised that revolution could not succeed and FW de Klerk that the costs of white supremacy could not be sustained. Only if we are able to move beyond the conventional wisdoms on both sides of the divide can we progress. That is what the declaration tries to do. Despite the bland post-1994 white consensus against apartheid, our past remains a powerful political symbol.
To those convinced of black inferiority, blaming apartheid for anything is simply an excuse for not running the trains on time. To those determined to hold on to white privilege, remembering apartheid is simply an excuse for blacks to get their hands on white wealth.
The declaration invites whites to recognise the degree to which their advantages are a product of state policy rather than innate superiority and, therefore, to step outside the mental shackles that prevent them responding to the opportunities offered by a democratic society. Since it is bizarre to expect blacks to express regret for a history of which they were the victim rather than the agent, the declaration is essential if we are to move beyond polarisation and begin the painful task of building something approaching a common South Africanness.
And that is precisely why it is so threatening to the official opposition. Ever since the DP leadership decided that a creative liberal response to majority rule was far less profitable and more difficult than whipping up minority angst, polarisation has been the lifeblood of the official opposition, none of whose leaders seem to have even contemplated moving outside their laager.
If we really do start moving closer together, the white-led opposition might have to move beyond the sterile politics of “fighting back”. Since it is happy in its comfort zone, it has no wish to contemplate a less confrontational politics. Inevitably, there will also be those on the other side of the fence who find the prospect of diminished polarisation threatening.
They will find common cause with the Democratic Alliance leadership in looking for difference rather than commonality. The point is worth stressing because, over time, gestures such as the declaration have the potential to influence black politics, too.
One of our undervalued advantages since 1994 has been the degree to which many black opinion makers have been able to step outside their camp by rejecting the call to express racial solidarity by uncritically supporting a black-led government. That is absolutely essential if we are to sustain a democracy.
But black intellectual and political diversity is obstructed by the continuation of white attitudes that refuse to see today’s inequalities as the result of yesterday’s discrimination. In principle, the more whites are able to step out of tribal thinking, the more difficult it becomes to demand black uniformity in the face of a common enemy.
So whites can also contribute to greater democracy by moving outside their own laager rather than, as the official opposition does, continually demanding that others move out of theirs. That said, it will take far more than a declaration to ensure that the promised benefits of people moving outside their own camps are realised.
If the “Home for All” campaign, of which the declaration is a part, is to be more than a seven-day wonder, it will need to be underpinned by continuing organisation and activity: just as anti-racist whites found the need during the late apartheid period to form organisations to fight the system, so the times may again demand a continuing effort dedicated across party allegiances to building a common democratic society.
In a society such as ours, polarisation is easy. But, since it is so embedded in our history, those who seek to avoid it need not only an ability to step outside the confines of their camp, but prolonged effort to turn history’s tide.