If you take racism seriously as a political party, you should demonstrate that seriousness with a magisterial grasp of the structural, institutional and interpersonal nature of racism.
The Democratic Alliance doesn’t have this kind of magisterial grasp on how racism and its longer colonial roots continue to shape our daily realities in South Africa.
In this context of underwhelming performance on “the race question”, terminating the membership of senior DA leader and MP Dianne Kohler Barnard for sharing a Facebook posting that yearns for the days when PW Botha ruled, isn’t impressive. It’s a gimmick. And here’s why:
The party is unable to call a racist spade a spade. Kohler Barnard appears to have been found guilty of misconduct, bringing the party into disrepute and violating the party’s social media policy. It released a terse statement late on Friday night confirming her expulsion.
Where is the articulation here of why her sharing of the Facebook posting was egregious? I have yet to hear one DA leader give a cogent explanation of how the content of the Facebook posting that was sharing undermines the dignity and memory of black people who had to endure the racism and brutality of the apartheid government ruled by PW Botha.
The first indication of whether a party – or an individual, for that matter – gets racism is how they understand what is wrong with racism. Bringing your party into disrepute and violating your social media policy are not the salient wrongs here.
The vague charge of misconduct allows some scope for the DA to demonstrate it gets what’s wrong with nostalgia for PW Botha, but then the party must say what the wrongdoing was, explicitly and fully, and publicly.
As it stands, it seems as if the party wants to have its cake and eat it: Get kudos for expelling Dianne Kohler Barnard (by signalling, hopefully, that racism isn’t tolerated), but avoiding a plain, blunt, explanation of what exactly she did wrong (and so minimise the backlash from anyone who thinks she is not a racist, nor did anything sufficiently wrong to merit expulsion).
Put the challenge differently: Can the DA explicitly tell us if it thinks Dianne Kohler Barnard is a racist? Is she? And if she is racist, how does the DA define racism and make judgments about someone’s character?
If, on the other hand, the DA doesn’t think she is a racist, but only believes that her speech act; the act of sharing a Facebook posting, constitutes racist action, can we have an indication of what it is about this posting that is racist?
And let me be clear about the aim of these further questions; they are not designed to help Kohler Barnard mount an appeal against the termination of her membership. The aim is straightforwardly to test the DA’s understanding of racism.
Because, if the party is unable to puzzle through the true nature of racism, and give a magisterial account of the precise wrongdoing that happened here, then we know it was a gimmick.
After all, for a very senior member of the party, a now-former member of the shadow cabinet at that, to be demoted or expelled, is the harshest sanction imaginable. So, why is the party rather short on detail when it comes to explaining the nature of the misconduct? Is it perhaps because the DA isn’t in the habit of thinking through and talking about, racism, daily, as the rest of conscious South Africa is forced to?
A party that gets the seriousness of racism should, as the Office of the ANC Chief Whip rightly pointed out this weekend in response to this expulsion, also be consistent in how it deals with speech acts that are racist.
If Kohler Barnard is not a racist, nor intended to feed racism by sharing that Facebook posting, then presumably the DA expelled her because the party rightly recognises that a pure heart isn’t enough to save someone from action that has poisonous consequences.
I am generously assuming the party is of the view that a racist intention is not necessary for an action to either be racist or to feed racist narrative. And that Kohler Barnard can, therefore, be expelled regardless of her subjective intention when she shared that posting.
But, then we have a consistency test: are you prepared to demonstrate this nuanced understanding of racism by also expelling someone who depicts black voters as dogs – calling a councillor “bobbejaan”, and so on? All of these speech acts are poisonous regardless of the intention of the speaker or writer of these words.
So, why not discipline them all and use the harshest possible sanction if they are found guilty? Oh, I know why: because Kohler Barnard’s expulsion is an event, rather than a decision that flows from consistent vigilance by the DA when it comes to racism. Black voters won’t fall for this.
* Eusebius McKaiser is the best-selling author of A Bantu In My Bathroom and Could I Vote DA? A Voter’s Dilemma.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.
*** E-mail your opinion to [email protected] and we will consider it for publication or use our Facebook and Twitter pages to comment on our stories. See links below.
CAPE TIMES