As I pen this, my mind wanders through a mine of contradictory thoughts arising from experiences that I have had throughout the week.
South Africa is a living laboratory of human relationships from the sublime to the bizarre. At one moment one has hope, and at another one is in a state of despair. I heard Julius Malema’s voice echoing through a loud speaker from Curries Fountain to the Kendra, where my 102-year-old mother resides.
“What’s all this noise,” she asks?
“Oh”, I say, “it’s a man called Malema who is celebrating the 4-year birthday of his political party.”
Is he like Mandela she asks?
“No, very different,” I say. I did not tell her about the racial slurs and the scapegoating of a community. Yet, as her immediate memory wanes, some of the past come to the fore.
If I probed she would have remembered the 1948 riots when she had gone shopping and her entire family was waiting anxiously for her to return before the angry crowds descended on Lorne Street. The Pillay family lived in Crystal Court in a block of flats which they owned. As a toddler I vaguely recall a white manager of the ice cream factory, owned by her family, standing in front of the building and claiming it as his own.
Like frightened mice, we all ran up to the roof garden of Crystal Court. It was fearful times then.
Stigmatising whole communities are toxic attempts to mobilise people into false perceptions of who their real exploiters are. Invariably it is the very politicians who claim to want to save them.
Many of us will recall Jimmy Manyi’s claim that there were too many coloureds in the Cape. Instead, Eusebius McKaiser strongly argues for racial authenticity when he says: “I am a coloured male and I do not want to disguise who I am.”
He urges us to focus on anti-racism and makes a powerful point to young South African minorities who may show tendencies for being apologetic about their racial identities as non-blacks.
Leaders such as Malema should understand that racial scapegoating of minority groups can have serious consequences for intergroup relations and national stability.
Whatever the sociological reasons may be to explain this sort of behaviour, one cannot run away from the fact that his rantings are scandalous and highly irresponsible.
Firstly, the lot of the unemployed poor masses cannot be attributed to a minority group who are not in political or economic control and over 40% of whom themselves are below the poverty datum line. Neither can the successful among them be blamed for their resourcefulness in business, education and politics.
Despite the closeness of their leaders who fought alongside each other, young Indians and Africans at grass roots level today know little about this part of their history. However, history teaches us, all too clearly, that scapegoats are the product of perceptions rather than facts.
The Nazis blamed the Jews for all the excesses of German society at a time when they knew only too well that the country was in an economic recession and they needed a scapegoat.
So let’s not feel embarrassed or apologetic about what is a natural inclination of human kind that one needs to come to terms with rather than hide in a closet of denial. In this respect both the victim and the persecutor need to reflect introspectively on each other’s condition.
“The kind of damage colonial rule does is that you no longer have the ability to rule yourself,” says Chinua Achebe.
“They say, ‘okay I give you your independence,’ but that person has already lost the habit of independence over years, over centuries. So it is a question of beginning to reinvent yourself the ways your ancestors must have done thousands of years ago because they learnt to rule themselves.”
He urges us to learn about ourselves, our mutual and collective histories, our languages and our culture.
South Africa is a country rich in human potential. Culturally it is endowed with diversity and when viewed in this light, the language, religion and customs of its peoples must surely be acknowledged and celebrated.
From the coloured labourer in the Cape to the Indian cane cutter in KwaZulu-Natal, the white farmer in the northern districts to the emergent black ruling classes, the composite picture ought to be framed by feelings of national unity.
However, with intermittent racial and ethnic tensions it would appear the Rainbow Nation has lost its short-lived hue.
Sadly, Malema’s utterances are a tinderbox. What is needed at this time is responsible attention to building harmonious race relations. So let’s work together to unite our people. As the late Martin Luther King jnr warned: “We must live together as brothers and sisters or perish together as fools.”
Rajab is a columnist and the interim chairperson of the Democracy Development Programme