The prospects of a rapport between President Thabo Mbeki and the new opposition leader, Helen Zille, should be much better than they were in Tony Leon’s time.
Both appear to be deniers of major ills that afflict our society. Mbeki’s denialism, on HIV/Aids, crime, unemployment, Zimbabwe and arms deal corruption, is well known.
Zille’s has been less widely publicised. She thinks that South Africans such as Mbeki, who underscore the small matter of racism in South Africa, have a hankering for an uncomfortable past.
In one of her first radio interviews after being elected DA leader, she could not resist the temptation to accuse the ANC of using racism to mask its shortcomings and dispense patronage.
The comments should have amazed no one. The default position in the white South Africa she effectively leads is that racism died on April 26 1994, the day before we all voted.
This section of our society, still the DA’s biggest pool of voters and potential voters, professes amazement at how easily black people “play the race card”.
They can hardly imagine why anyone would want to do that. The only time they are accused of racism is when cheeky natives, hiding behind their incompetence, outrageously do so. Such blacks are driven by a victimology that refuses to die, no matter how many opportunities they are given.
They insist they have no problem with the black government or affirmative action. Some of their best friends are black, they say.
Zille and her constituency cleverly dress their anti-affirmative action and anti-empowerment rhetoric in neutral language. They cannot explain what could have prompted the premature departure of Investec’s Bonga Bangani from corporate South Africa or the abuse he received once his unhappiness was made public.
They dismiss as ridiculous Butana Khompela’s threats to take away the passports of the rugby team travelling to the World Cup, sidestepping his central point: what happens to talented black players when they outgrow junior teams, and why does whatever happen to them not affect their white counterparts?
In rugby, as in the corporate world, the failure by blacks to move up the ranks is attributed to not “working hard enough”.
Those who shy away from laying racism at the doorstep of white South Africa may think they are helping in a Tutu-ist “rainbow nation” project. But, as the Germans showed after World War II, only by confronting the flaws in society’s collective psyche can they be redressed. The “open-mindedness” of some blacks on this question helps nobody.
For white South Africa, facing the continuing racism in their immediate society is a bridge too far. They acknowledge racism only among the few, at a braai or waving the old flag at a stadium. Never in themselves.
Whatever black consciousness might claim, black people are perfectly capable of being racist. But, in South Africa, the most injurious and institutionalised racism has been perpetrated by whites against blacks. No amount of rainbow nation sophistry can change that.
One might have hoped that Zille, with her undisputed anti-apartheid credentials, would be sensitive to the place of white racism in the grand scheme of things. But, in the end, she is a politician whose first concern is her core constituency.
We are still waiting for a white opposition leader with the gumption to tell his or her people that racism is neither a figment of black people’s imagination, nor something that inanimate institutions such as workplaces or universities are guilty of. It lies in the hearts and minds of people they know and work with and often hold in high regard.