The phrase rooi gevaar has assumed a new meaning, conjuring up images of the EFF whose manner of breaking rules shows no signs of changing.
The apparent fear is whether or not the EFF - post the change it professes to champion - will abide by the rules?
But that such fears and questions seem to emanate more from the white community than the black is not without reason. The blame lies in the black community for allowing itself to be followers and students without inkling to lead or teach the nation.
Worse now is that the analysis is monopolised by fewer black journalists and intellectuals. Between 1994 up to 2002, black journalists and intellectuals used to stand their ground, telling it as it is - for liberators now in government “to take it or leave it”.
Post-2002, the unofficial line to tackle criticism is: “If you are black you are unpatriotic; if you are white you are racist.”
Name calling, labelling and in some instances profanities and unhelpful gestures came into the picture.
As the political conflicts sought mediation from the courts, constitutional experts, analysts, lawyers, and interest groups like the Council for the Advancement of the Constitution, Freedom under Law, Helen Suzman Foundation, Black Sash, Section 27, Corruption Watch, Outa and political parties rushing to courts for resolution, political leadership analysis drifted to columnists like Max du Preez, Adriaan Basson, Barney Mthombothi, Sikhonanthi Mantshantsha and publications such as Huffington Post and Daily Maverick, with the rest of mainstream black journalists either resigned and/or pushed to the periphery.
The net effect of this is that blacks and black journalists, though a component of the majority population have become a “cultural minority” when it comes to identifying, defining and determining issues for conscientious national discourse.
As black journalists and blacks in other fields took a back seat avoiding to tackle people that had never believed in the capability of blacks to govern, the likes of AfriForum emerged from the racist forests to openly ride the wave of correction, to blow a moral whistle at the corrupt regime.
The plight faced by the SABC 8, during its erstwhile chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng where AfriForum and Solidarity intervened is a case in point. Now AfriForum and Solidarity dress in self-cleansing robes as civil society entity or lobby group.
What this suggests is that “experts”, be they self-made or accredited, are never born out of cowards but out of the brave be they right or wrong.
Effectively, in not wanting to be unpatriotic as charged, and forced down the guilt trip, blacks and black journalists are no longer looked up to, to lead in the direction of analysis.
The long and short is that the bravery to define or mis-define what happened in South Africa pre-1994 and post-1994 should not be the reserve solely of those who have had no direct experience of power- lessness, landlessness, voicelessness and oppression.
Those without such experiences cannot be teachers defining what rooi gevaar was pre-1994 and what rooi gevaar is post-1994.
Blacks have become students behind the desks, to learn and be taught a new political curriculum, with nothing to teach for fear of facing career-limiting implications or labelled unpatriotic. It is out of crises that heroes or villains are born.
Ngwenya is founding Secretary General of the Forum of Black Journalists (1997-2002), freelance writer, columnist and Project Co-ordinator of the 70sGroup - a platform for liberation thinkers that were active in the 1970s and have regrouped to combine their intellectual capital in the service of society and promotion of the efficacy of the state.