When President Thabo Mbeki took to the parliamentary podium in 1996 and declared ”I am an African,” everyone in Parliament who spoke during that debate declared and asserted that they were Africans, from African National Congress members to those of the Freedom Front.
The ruling party has since undergone a Damascene conversion. Overnight, everyone, from the Cabinet to the rank and file, rediscovered their indigenous names and forswore the European names by which they had been known throughout their struggle years.
To the average Pan Africanist Congress cadre this was strange. We had always said that if a frog went to other frogs and declared that it was a frog, the response would be: ”so what?” because it was a given.
But not so for some Africans in Azania. So deep was the extent of colonial de-education that the bonds of a pan-African nationhood were frayed.
Though the truth of an encompassing Africanness was always self-evident for us, some issues are still worth exploring as we consider the presence and future of ”white” Africans.
We have seen how some people from the ”white” community who are overtly right-wing and racist in practice — such as those who drag Africans to death behind their bakkies, feed them to carnivores, engage in feudal relations of production or heartlessly refuse people the burial of their deceased — with a straight face declare that they are Africans.
To their continuous frustration they find rejection; they find a yawning gulf between them and their supposed kinsmen (the indigenous Africans). This has led to some endlessly writing and bemoaning the fact that, despite their repeated declarations of Africanness, they don’t seem to find acceptance from their supposed kinsmen (the indigenous).
This has led some to ask whether they can ever be, or be accepted as, Africans; while many blacks ask whether these people are really Africans?
The question has never arisen about who or what is a Chinese, an Arab or an Italian and so it should not about Africans.
But it arises because in the past our own right to exist, our humanity and equal share in the common brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind have been questioned.
The question that arises, therefore, is how non-indigenous citizens can become Africans and whether one can be accepted as such? The basic principles of the PAC say that this is possible and necessary for our country, Azania, and the continent.
The PAC, from its inception, has refused to identify people in terms of colour. In the 1990s the PAC had a T-Shirt which read: ”Call me African, not black, white, coloured or Indian!”
This reflected the principles of the PAC on building a single African nationhood, rather than the notion of rainbowism with its inherent assumptions of eternal separateness and differences. The so-called ”whites” and ”Indians” who joined the PAC realised their full humanity and felt the genuine bonds of comradeship and Africanism.
An African refers to the indigenous citizens (first and foremost) and to anybody who accepts the democratic rule of the African majority; owes his or her loyalty to Africa and works for its development.
It cannot be a nationality in flux. There are many in the ”white” community who say they are Africans when they want to protect their (material) interests, but when things are normal they disparage everything African and never stop lecturing us about the etiquette of Western Europe.
In my view, the dominant norms and values that should anchor society must be African. So anybody declaring himself or herself to be an African without respecting and identifying with the fundamental and progressive values that give us our African identity will continue to wallow in the waters of rejection.
The ”white” soccer players who played for Pirates, Chiefs or Swallows are accepted fully, have African nicknames and, I suppose, have never felt alone or isolated in a jam-packed Orlando Stadium.
Or take the example of Johnny Clegg. His musical idiom was African — he played, sang and danced like any African. He definitely did not feel like an island in a sea of hostel dwellers, but he was also accepted as one of the masses.
Thus anyone becoming an African cannot be a minority; for you identify and become a part or one with the majority. You became the majority.
So it is possible and desirable that everyone in Africa should become an African, identify with Africa, work for its development, and respect and embrace its values and norms.
Robert Sobukwe declared, back in 1959: ”There is only one race to which we all belong — the human race. Here is a tree, rooted in African soil, watered with water from the rivers of Africa. Come sit under its shade and become with us leaves of the same branch, and branches of the same tree.”
Themba Godi is the deputy president of the Pan Africanist Congress and the chairperson of Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts