ANC Youth League president Fikile Mbalula drew a lot of anger when he reportedly referred to the experience of walking into the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) as something akin to being in Bombay.
As far as I know, UKZN was not staging a Bollywood production at the time. I am, therefore, still undecided about whether Mbalula saw an apparition or was quoted ‘out of context”, given the fact that the UKZN vice-chancellor, Malegapuru Makgoba, accused the media of distorting what Mbalula said when he delivered the June 1976 Memorial Lecture at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Whether this is a case of ‘when in doubt blame the media”, the meaning of the Bombay ‘distortion” needs to be interrogated, especially as it seems that such a geographical or ethnic reference did leave Mbalula’s mouth.
The Bombay furore is not only about the transformation of the tertiary education sector but is more broadly about the link between identity and the distribution of resources in a post-apartheid context.
During the struggle against apartheid, the ANC conceived of its revolutionary goal in terms of the ‘liberation of blacks in general” and ‘Africans in particular”. This formulation is coming under attack because it places some who were within the ranks of the oppressed both inside and outside the circle of sameness in relation to access to social, economic and other resources.
As the liberation struggle sought to undermine apartheid constructions of difference, the anger generated by Mbalula’s statement seems to be a response to what some may perceive as a post-apartheid construction of difference to the disadvantage of minorities in the ranks of those who were oppressed.
When UKZN is compared to Bombay, two things are happening. First, the metaphor suggests that, in the narrow context of UKZN, educational resources are distributed in a manner that does not reflect the demographics of the country.
Second, it reinforces the fear that minorities, including those who were part of the oppressed, will be pushed to the periphery when it comes to benefiting from the gains of our democratic dispensation.
The question that arises is whether the notion of blacks in general and Africans in particular correctly reflected the hierarchy of oppression under apartheid and, if it did, should the post-apartheid dispensation evolve along a trajectory that reflects a hierarchy of racial benefit? To the extent that our Constitution recognises the need for discrimination, should this approach extend beyond the black-white dynamic?
Finding answers to these questions will, at times, involve conflict and tension, given the fact that even the idea of who is an African is not as uncontested as it was during the days of apartheid. As access to political power has become a means of achieving other goals, including access to resources that were previously denied to the black majority, the task of achieving ‘unity in diversity” has become even more daunting. This task is not going to be made less daunting by denying the existence of inter-racial and intra-racial tensions.
We must accept that newspaper columns and seminars paint a partial picture. Those who move in middle-class circles have more opportunities than their working-class counterparts to interact socially with people of other races. The reality of and perceptions about racism are much more of a challenge among working-class ‘Africans”, ‘Indians” and ‘coloureds”.
Here the carefully chosen and sugar-coated words of opinion pieces and academic discourse are not the dominant reality.
Feelings about race and how it promotes and undermines access to resources are expressed more honestly. But this honesty about race and racism coincides with dishonest attempts by the middle classes to redefine racial, cultural and class identity in ways that seek either to perpetuate old patterns of access or create new ways of foregrounding those aspects of a multiple identity that are likely to deliver maximum benefit.
In the process, some are trying to impose a post-racial logic that refuses to confront apartheid patterns of distribution and how their impact is the main source of painful, but necessary, policies of unfair discrimination.
The Mbalula saga, as unfortunate as it was, challenges us to avoid knee-jerk responses that confirm our chosen identities in favour of a post-racial agenda based on accepting that there is no South African who will always fall within the circle of benefit.
Aubrey Matshiqi is a senior associate political analyst at the Centre for Policy Studies