We are left with a task that requires us to navigate “between the Scylla of thinking, on the one hand, that race is mere illusion, mere ideology, and, on the other, the Charybdis of thinking that race is something objective and fixed.” – H. Winant.
In the South African context, there still exists a disquieting current of active perpetual racism as exemplified by daily reports of racism, which manifest themselves on various levels.
The myth of a rainbow nation has come back to haunt us. The colours of the rainbow still have racism written all over them. Sadly, while we won the fight to end legal apartheid, its vestiges remain.
As a black South African, I am always baffled by the sometimes inexplicable relations between whites and blacks.
I have seen social cohesion taking place between white South Africans and black Africans. I am not sure how many times I have come across motor accidents involving blacks. More often than not, the first people to be on the scene are white, offering whatever help they can and even phoning the ambulance and the police.
I have seen whites stopping in areas that are known to be notoriously dangerous for their crime, helping black victims of an accident.
I have seen whites risking their lives jumping into fathomless dams or lakes to retrieve the dead bodies of their fellow black compatriots. Indeed, racism is a complex phenomenon.
Indeed, South Africans are full of love, but they are not aware of it. If they decide to come together, they do so in a stupendously spectacular way. However, if they also decide to stay apart, they do so in a disappointingly bizarre way.
The question then is, what is the problem? Why is it that racism is still with us?
Gwede Mantashe, the ANC secretary-general hit the nail on the head when he said shortly after the University of Orange Free State Reitz video incident that the problem with racism is that it can either be a manifestation of prejudice or a stereotype. When it is a manifestation of stereotype, it is very difficult to deal with because it is in the subconscious mind as a reflection of upbringing, values.
As such, it can be traced back not only to families but also to political activities both in the past and in the present. Notwithstanding the fact that apartheid has ended, racism remains a basic problem and a dangerous threat to the human relations of different races.
The recent resurgence of racism, as exemplified by the unfortunate racial utterances of young white learners at Pietermaritzburg Girls’ High School and Maritzburg College, the case of South African realtor Penny Sparrow, who compared black people to monkeys, and the continued naked and diabolical racial abuse being perpetrated by white farm owners against black people in areas like Dumbe (Paul Pietersburg and other areas in KwaZulu-Natal) is a blot on the legacy of our first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela, who risked the wrath of his own people in his quest to promote racial tolerance.
One such heartbreaking story is about a couple who had lived on a farm for 47 years. When the man died, his body had to be brought home from the mortuary for burial. Notably, his home was on a farmstead owned by a white farmer.
Upon arrival with the corpse, the family found the white farmer and his workers demolishing the house where the corpse was to be kept for the night vigil. This conduct was, in my view, cruelty at its worst.
It would be disingenuous however to paint all white people with the same brush on this matter.
When my son’s white friend comes for sleepovers at my house, we hardly see a white child but a child. Same goes for my son. Sometimes he is taken away by the white family for a week’s visit. I neither think of my child being racially abused, nor of his safety when he is with his white friend’s parents.
This is the kind of relationship that needs to be encouraged and amplified among racial groups, especially the youth.
Commenting on racial discourse in the country, Barney Pityana, once said: “For us in South Africa, democratisation must, first and foremost, give moral satisfaction to the multitudes of previously oppressed people and restore their dignity. If it fails, then the moral authority of the new South Africa will be under question.”
Pityana accused all sections of the populace for failing to talk intelligently about race, and argued that all racial groups see events from very narrow perspectives – blacks from a historical perspective, whites from a position of privilege derived from exclusionary practices.
Liss A Flores and Dreama G Moon point out in their piece “Rethinking Race, Revealing Dilemmas: Imagining a New Racial Subject in Race Traitor” that in 1993 in the US two white male academics and former activists published the first issue of a journal called Race Traitor.
According to the editors of this journal, Noel Ignatiev and John Garvey, the intent is to create an intellectual centre that reaches out to white people who are dissatisfied with the terms of membership in the white club. Its desired audience are whites who understand whiteness as a problem.
While Ignatiev and Garvey argue that the destruction of whiteness is their goal, Flores and Moon, however, conceive of their project as part of the larger move to deconstruct whiteness and insert in its place a new racial project they call race treason or the new abolition.
Even though the foregoing arguments are based on America’s racial experiences, they resonate with the racism that is still prevalent in South Africa, more than 20 years into democracy. After all, there is a thin line between the US and South Africa in this regard.
Perhaps it is time in South Africa that a forum is created to deal decisively with racism once and for all.
Many South Africans, especially black South Africans, deluded themselves into believing that all whites had graciously bought into Nelson Mandela’s magnanimous gesture of promoting reconciliation among different races.
However, the resurgence of racism as exemplified by a number of incidents indicates that much still needs to be done to exorcise the deep-seated racial prejudices into which some white people were religiously and systematically socialised. It is rather sad to hear that the racial prejudices are expressed by young white people, whom one would not expect to do so given the critical milestones we have achieved.
Who is the culprit here? Is it the young white people, or their parents who unashamedly inculcate racism in this day and age? According to Ignatiev, public schools in the US are doing more harm to black children than all the “racist groups combined”. Recently, in South Africa, former chair of the African Union, Nkosazana Zuma-Dlamini, decried the kind of history that is taught to black children.
Andre Slabbert in his piece “Cross-Cultural Racism in South Africa: Dead or Alive?” enumerates a set of interventionist procedures that could be adopted to help address the scourge of racism.
Racism is attitudinally based, which indicates that it is largely learned behaviour. If behaviour is learned, it can be unlearned. In the same sense, desired behavioural patterns can be learned.
In order to reverse mind-sets and to create a perceptual shift in more mature audiences, the media should play an active role.
Pityana is correct when he asserts that the task of ridding our country of all forms of racism has to be an ongoing duty. Despite its fractures and faults, or perhaps because of them, South Africa is still a place of warmth, connection and deep humanity.
* Shongwe works in the office of the premier of KZN.The article is written in his personal capacity.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.