Premier Helen Zille regards herself as the best thing that ever happened to South African politics. President Jacob Zuma thinks he's a victim of some unnamed conspiracies, and believes he deserves not only our commiseration, but our cheer and compensation, and we must butt out of his private life even though he's the country's no 1 civil servant and public figure. Too every man their illusions. But if a person is judged by the company they keep they are both disappointing. By company I include with whom one shares similar opinions. I think we are all know the kind of company president Zuma keeps by now; premier Zille is another case.
If you peruse through the support material premier Zille got from her article at Polticsweb, first published on the DA website, you'll, like me, be convinced that she keeps some rotten company also; a bunch of unrepentant angry racist. She may argue that it is not by personal invitation. There are always reasons why people are attracted to another, and mistaken identity is rarely not one of them.
What is clear from most of the people who wrote to support premier Zille is that before the DA's win of the Western Cape they had been feeling alienated. The win boosted their confidence to frankly express their views and show their true colours. Their main opinion is strong racist aversion to the ANC. Why these are drawn to premier Zille is, to me, a simple matter; bees are drawn to sweet nectar and flies to rot.
South Africa needs to tackle its number one rot, the racial problem (attitude), head-on. That is why you don't hear me complain much, even if I think the vulgar tone is regrettable. It is always better to be upfront about these things instead of talking about them at tearooms. I hope by now that the 2009 elections have finally managed to convince most people that we are incorrigibly racist.
After the superficial wallpapering of our racial problems through the so called Mandela era, we entered the harsh transformation era of Mbeki that left all of us dissatisfied and clearly resentful. All can see now that our project of racial harmony (rainbow people), with the exception of few shining examples (bless that), has been an unmitigated failure. The fault is not in the skies but in us that we are inherently racist. We preach non racialism but we don't embrace its spirit. In fact, I don't find it acceptable to speak of racism in a third person voice; it gives respite from personal responsibility. So I'll speak of myself in my own voice.
In 1903, Du Bois published a book titled The Souls of Black Folk. In the book he panned the borderline feelings of black intellectual into what he called "problem". Du Bios had a feeling of being "trapped between two worlds". He talked of "unreconciled strivings"; what another writer, expounding on him, called "the tension between race man and aesthete, between puritan and pagan, between the pursuit of social justice and the self-cultivation German ideal of Bildung." This might be true in my case to some extent, but it is not how I define myself. In fact, that's one of my criticism of Du Bios, defining one's black life by how you relate to white people. I just don't feel that much concern about the issue, which is probably why racists don't bother me much when not directly poking my nose.
Though not going as far as classifying myself as a "problem" I probably can easily say with Du Bois that white racism "has made me far less rounded a human being than I should like to have been." This is not to excuse my failings on superfluous historical terms like ‘reactive racism'. And I certainly do not feel I live under the shadow of white man's civilisation, which I regard only as an amalgam of different cultures assuming a progressive spirit.
What I'm starting to lose patience with is the stupendous titillating lowdown mob psychology of radical collectivism that is supposed to be my cultural background, as typified presently in our country by the ANC and its alliance partners. And I am sure many a white person feels the same about the smug assurance of superiority complex and covet attitude of exceptionalsim as exemplified by the DA under the leadership style of premier Zille.
I belong to a group of people (and we are growing fast post the 2009 elections) who with weary resignation watch the bad gain more passion and the beast crouch in our Jerusalem. What is clear for those who have eyes to see is that our political discourse, and emotions, are under the clutch of master manipulators who know how to use our identities, anxieties and hopes against our own good - and for their political gain. The worst part is that we make ourselves defenseless against them by our own prejudices, which the manipulators know how to abuse and manipulate.
I'm growing angry at the lost opportunities of hope flux to build our country into a great nation. But I'm through blaming it on our leaders, even those of obvious short-comings; ukufa kusembizeni [death is in the house]. After all, people, especially in democratic governance, get the rulers they deserve. Hence I assume Jacob Zuma's presidency had something to do with me, whether I voted for him or not. For one, the kind of regressive racism we see both in support of and against premier Zille is what caused everyone to go back to their respective laagers in these recently passed elections, and subsequently brought about the governance we have today.
We are now at each other's throats, showing how much we loathe one another, mostly because of our skin colours and the inherent social attitudes that are consequential to it. It does not just end with racism, we're annoying, annoyed, stupid, repetitive, superficial, hateful, supercilious, bigoted, narrow, vulgar, stiff-necked, selfish, conniving, prejudiced people who only see the speck in another's eye before we take note of the mote in our own. In short, we are a disgrace even to ourselves. Until we learn to be true to the values of humanity, and see the serious correlation between integrity and good society, we shall remain a house divided upon itself that'll never stand.
Some of us have decided to desert the houses we were placed by our birth conditions with growing realisation that we made a very good choice. At the moment you'll find us seating at the plinth of our new house of hope and new agenda for change (Cope), learning to build it according to true specifications of liberty and human diginity.
Carefully, like bricklayers, we build the walls based on good foundation of good political ethics and moral foundation. Sure now and then we find somewhere that the wall is askew, and where we cannot straighten it up we demolish and start up afresh (that's the advantage of our stage, we are still able to demolish walls without affecting too much the whole structure). And yes sometimes even our foreman take too long to realise the fault lines, but, as recently seen in the Eastern Cape, they do get to the bottom of it eventually, quicker than those who have settled and established bad habits.
There's has also been some concerted criticism that we are not that different from the houses we deserted. Well you know what they say, our parents are sometimes our ruin; but we can also be wise through inheritance. At the least we are making an effort and are not yet addicted to mischief and politics of envy that comes with supposing we were born to govern the country until Jesus Christ comes back. Our faults are not yet structural. Moment by moment we're getting rid of the company of parasites and flatters who followed us to the new house hoping for quick gain. We know Rome was not built in one day, and God willing, are certain it shall be built in our life time.
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