Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya
This Saturday will mark six years since the death of Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, the former opposition party leader during the apartheid years.
I have not always agreed with Slabbert’s politics but it has always intrigued me why someone like him, who had all that was required to make it to the top of the Nationalist Party hierarchy, chose to give it all up and pursue a career in trying to oust what was obviously a popular government with the electorate.
We know it was popular because the electorate returned it to power at every election from 1948 until 1994, when it was forced to give up power because of a combination of geopolitical conditions and refusal of the oppressed to accept their oppression lying down.
I do not know if there will be any events to commemorate this obviously eminent South African. You do not have to agree with his politics or methods to recognise that he was no ordinary South African.
My thoughts on Slabbert were amplified when I read about Pretoria High Court judge Mabel Jansen’s racist and deeply offensive statements regarding black males and black girls.
The link here is that Slabbert eventually got to a point that, however well meaning he might have been about the state of affairs in South Africa, he needed to appreciate the fact that he had to deal with his own baggage as a beneficiary of a state that privileged whiteness and maleness ahead of everyone else who was not.
Slabbert realised soon enough that the futility of discussing the reality of white racism in a Parliament that was not ready to discuss the true state of South Africa.
Six years since his death, we are again reminded of the ingrained nature of racism in South Africa.
One can only imagine that any black male who has appeared before Judge Jansen, or one who will appear before her on a charge of rape, would be guilty until proven otherwise.
Many white South Africans I have encountered tend to think that discussing racism is either an accusation that they are racist or trying to rekindle dying fires of hate.
They do not seem to appreciate that not discussing race and racism traps them in the types of hurtful assumptions they make about their black compatriots.
In the end, they make what are potentially career-ending comments about black people.
Unsurprisingly, Judge Jansen denies she is racist. Matthew Theunissen also denied he was despite calling black people kaffirs.
I suspect that one of the reasons we do not make any headway against racism is because we’d rather write the “K-word” and not mention the offensive word in full.
South Africans do not have to take a cue from me on how they must engage with the reality of racism as a present problem and not a historical issue.
They can, however, revisit the legacy of Slabbert and seriously ask themselves if they are making a meaningful contribution in their own spaces in the fight against racism and its attendant assumptions about others’ moral and intellectual inferiority.
It is easy to talk about how the likes of ANC treasurer Zweli Mkhize is hypocritical for waiting 16 years before talking about the misgivings he had about former president Thabo Mbeki’s stance on HIV/ Aids.
It is easy to accuse the governing party of protecting President Jacob Zuma on myriad decisions – personal and those pertaining to statesmanship.
A few months ago, I read an article from a person purporting to be a DA member expressing her disappointment that Mmusi Maimane had placed racism on the agenda.
The letter writer said she thought Maimane was “different”, probably meaning the type that in American literature is described as a “smiling negro” who does not threaten the status quo.
Of course we must discuss corruption, mismanagement, inefficient use of resources and high levels of crime. But we must also discuss racism.
It is not going to disappear just because some are uncomfortable discussing it.
Even if the contribution to the discussion is to say that employment equity is racism against whites, or what some call “reverse racism”, let that too be on the table.
I do not subscribe to the defeatist theory that older, more established societies like the United States of America have not been able to exorcise the racism demon so South Africans must just learn to live with racism.
If you think racism is inevitable, you must also ask yourself if you are happy to be on its receiving end. If the answer is no, do something about it.
The first and easiest is to make it part of everyday conversation like crime and corruption.
The harder route, but probably more rewarding, is to reflect deeply about your own society in the way that Frederik van Zyl Slabbert was prepared to, and make the necessary changes in your space.