How delightful to be back in the R of SA, the land of the double negative ‘Not for Non-Blacks', where race stewards filter out journalists of the wrong colour before a racially segregated body is addressed by the president of the African National Congress. "I saw nothing wrong," said Jacob Zuma, when queried as to the ethics, as ANC president (and aspiring future President of the nation), of his addressing a meeting from which certain journalists had been barred on the grounds of race, and from which a trespasser across the colour line had already been evicted. He saw nothing wrong. As explained by Abby Makoe, member of the steering committee of the Forum for Black Journalists, which had organised the meeting and set up the race criterion for the press, the Forum "allows African, Indian and coloured journalists to come together to ‘engage in healthy debate' regarding issues of common interest". This criterion was then applied also to journalists wishing to cover the ANC president's address. Black journalists who were not members of the FBJ had right of entry, however, by the organisation's race qualification ruling.
The ANC's new course on the subject of race
One would like to know more about what Mr Zuma believes to be ‘right' concerning issues of race. Would it have been ‘right', for instance, should Mr Zuma have addressed the meeting if his white colleague on the National Executive Committee of the ANC, Jeremy Cronin MP, had sought to cover the meeting in his professional capacity as a journalist, and been barred on the grounds of race? And what does Mr Cronin himself think of Mr Zuma's judgment on this issue? And his fellow members of the NEC? Or will they remain silent? We would like to know more of this new turn in ANC policy at the highest level, which returns us to the well-worn ground of the National Party in days of yore.
Degrees of racial mixture
That criterion of ‘coloured', too, which Mr Makoe and the FBJ have now re-introduced into the formal political language of South Africa, and which Mr Zuma considers to be ‘nothing wrong': how was this criterion to be defined and policed by the FBJ and its race stewards, for this to be ethically acceptable to Mr Zuma and the ANC? Who is a ‘coloured' and who is not? The Germans had a system from the days of Adolf Hitler which the ANC and Mr Zuma might wish to consider. If there was any suspicion that a person might be on the ‘wrong' side of their own racial classification lines in those days, the suspected person could be defined along a graded system. If only one of the person's parents was deemed by the race doctors to be of sound Aryan stock, then the child of those parents was classified as Mischling, erste Grad (mongrel, first degree). If only one grandparent out of four was a racially sound Aryan, then the grandchild was Mischling, zweite Grad (mongrel, second degree), and so on into infinity.
Policing the race classification system
Given the unfortunate fate of those deemed not sufficiently Aryan in those days, it was certainly a whole lot safer to be closer to the infinity point! But at what point would Mr Zuma, Mr Makoe and the FBJ consider a so-called ‘coloured' not sufficiently ‘coloured' enough to be allowed admission to the meeting? How many degrees of non-blackness would be too many? And how were these to be determined, anyway? In the bad old days of ‘bad' race classification laws (unlike the brave new world of the FBJ's race classification arrangements), some people had the unfortunate experience of having a state official insert a pencil, or a medical probe, or something, into their hair, to see if it was too tightly curled: the old ‘peperkorrels' (or peppercorn) test. Would Mr Zuma and his NEC have seen ‘nothing wrong' if this criterion had been applied to certain journalists of dubious hair classification, had they wished to report on Mr Zuma's remarks alongside their more obviously ‘black' colleagues?
When shades of grey fade into pale
The matter is not so fanciful as Mr Zuma might imagine. There are a number of leading members of the ANC, in government, and in the NEC, who themselves would be perfectly acceptable by the race classification system of the FBJ, but who are married (or were married) to people who are not. (Would Mr Zuma not like to do a little head count of these rather dubious colleagues, for old times' sake?). It may well be that the spouses of these people are not journalists anyway. Or that they might not wish to attend a conclave of the FBJ. But suppose that the journalist spouse of, say Cabinet Minister X, or of NEC member Y, had presented herself or himself at the door of this gathering of the FBJ immediately prior to its address by Comrade Jacob, and had been refused entry? Or the son or daughter of this couple, say? Or a grandson, or granddaughter? At what point does the ANC now think it ‘nothing wrong' when ‘coloured' becomes too much a lighter shade of pale?
Well, at least now we know where we are, back in the R of SA. There is bad apartheid, and there is good apartheid. Bad apartheid was then; and good apartheid is now. Thank you for enlightening us, comrades.
