More to Manyi
In March last year, Jimmy Manyi said things which any democrat would find utterly wrong in both tone and tenor.
He indicated that coloureds in the Western Cape were “overconcentrated” and therefore the Employment Equity Act should be redrafted to redress this.
In an interview on Kyknet, he uttered words in which perhaps he let his tongue run away with itself.
But it has typecast him as the champion of base racism.
Strangely, for almost a year this disreputable statement went unnoticed and unreported.
The question is why?
Then Solidarity, a group of the most backward and irreconcilable white supremacists, perhaps coming from the same mould as Manyi, fished out this statement and gave it publicity.
And so these representatives of the old South Africa have been allowed to dictate the agenda of national discourse in the country.
Both Solidarity and the DA are aware that municipal elections are around the corner and that some parties, especially in the Western Cape, survive on a racial backlash, sometimes subtle and sometimes open, when campaigning.
Whatever protestations of innocence and being misquoted Manyi may put forward, the fact is that he uttered words that are wayward and should be condemned.
It is sometimes such banter that stereotypes people and incites ridicule and racial profiling.
Many others have now jumped on the bandwagon. The DA’s Wilmot James has gone to the archives to retrieve some other remarks Manyi made about the Indians.
Again Manyi can be faulted for racial stereotyping, as was the case under apartheid, in Nazi Germany or in Rwanda, where people were racially or tribally profiled on the basis of physical appearance.
Manyi’s scandalous comments are doubly harmful because some are using them to stem the tide of real transformation and denying the challenges they present.
What then is our take on Manyi’s fulminations?
*He must stand condemned, and no one should find excuses to justify this nonsense.
* Equally, his views should not be used to conceal the known and very real over-representation of whites in senior management positions and access to our universities. Those who do should be treated in the same way as Manyi is being treated.
* The resolution of the national question in South Africa, the striving for a united and non-sexist South Africa (that recognises the historic triple oppression of African women) should be pursued with greater vigour.
* As democrats from the liberation movement, we should always be vigilant about who sets the agenda and how we then interact with such an agenda.
* It is purely opportunistic for some people to treat Manyi’s comments as representative of the ANC’s views. He was not speaking on behalf of the ANC.
The fact that he works for the government does not make him an ANC spokesman any more than Tony Leon’s ambassadorship makes him an ANC member.
James Ngculu
Former Provincial Chairperson
ANC – Western Cape
Cape Town