As I was saying...
I don't usually reply to reader's comments on what I've written, but in the case of the article published here - under the title ‘South Africans: Are we incorrigibly racist?" - I shall make an exception. Before I do, let me thank those who took time to reply in a constructive manner. Others chose to go below the belt; I shall not dignify those with a response; in fact the whole fiasco confirmed my suspicions that we have pathological issues that'll probably take many generations to overcome. I'm certain I added some wrinkles to my face from reading their comments, some of which made me ashamed of being South African (I had not felt like that since the apartheid years).
I take strong offence to the person(s) who posted a disgusting reply using my name; that was just mean, and it strained my patience. I must say, reading through the comments diminished my respect for the white race; the challenge here will be to avoid generalising. As for those who seem convinced that I don't know the difference between ‘too' and ‘to', what can I say except thank them for picking up the typo. But they take their pedantic duties too seriously if they allowed this to discourage them from reading the article. True to character they didn't let that minor neglect deflect them from negatively commenting on the article. The rest is just is hot air.
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Many white people who honestly engaged with what I was saying put different value systems as the base of differences between white and black in South Africa. They cited things like corruption, disrespect for law, maladministration, promiscuity, lack of personal responsibility, indifference to moral virtue, and the whole enchilada as their problems with the black majority. I'm black, and have similar concerns, but it does not make me anti-black or racist. I object to the abuse of these facts to serve the selfish desire to return to the status quo ante that I sense in them. They seem to want to numb us into forgetting responsibilities of levelling out the playing field, consciously tilted by the historical injustices of the apartheid laws.
South Africa is one of the countries where politics is not concentrated on economics, which is why it was possible to transform political power without transferring economic wealth. Do most white people honestly believe that the black majority of this country will forever be satisfied with hollow political power forever? I for one do not think so. I think the only hope for South Africa is to go the egalitarian route; or face a social revolt in the near future. The country needs better means of income distribution. What this boils down to is economics. Shortcuts we must avoid, but the process dose need to be propped up.
For instance we have to understand what we actually mean by meritocracy in our situation. We must never forget that social and economic statuses of people are driven inter-generationally by the systematic and significant manner by which the future of children, for one, is significantly dependent on that of their parents. Pure merit is selfish where the field is not level and biased towards those with more resources.
It is no accident that more white young people get better medical services, better education, more money for extracurricular activities, their own personal computer, and general exposure to progressive elements of our society. This is more about inherited wealth and prestige than merit. As if this was not enough, when they get to working age they have better personal connections available from wealthy/successful parents. Of course there are white people in the same situation as the majority of black people; I'll talk about them later.
Children born in worse off conditions usually do not even get the chance of realising their ability, let alone getting opportunities to match their abilities. If you do not tweak the system, which is biased against them, there'll never be a transfer of resources and opportunities to cut across all societies and generations. Consequently there'll be no real equality, the very base of meritocracy. How do you speak of equal opportunity, open society and competition for all in that situation?
What is worse is to see imperatives for meritocracy used to defend and maintain the unfair social and economic status quo to the advantage of the privileged. That's just mean and letting in apartheid by the backdoor. Transformation left to mechanics of merit here will never occur; we should by now know better how human nature operates. Human nature will never go against its own interests unless compelled to. And we need to learn that the present is consequential to the past, which is why it must be consciously corrected. There is no invisible hand to do this for us.
The callous disregard by some white people for the past that has cruelly placed most black people in their present general situation of squalor and poverty in this country is to me preposterous. It is surprising how they just don't seem to get the fact that the majority of black people in this country are still nursing open wounds. To simply say we should move on rings of insulting disregard for black circumstances and pain. If the only way this country can move forward is assuming collective amnesia overnight, and to act as if the apartheid years were just a terrible nightmare, then I'm afraid this country will never move on. In fact I can bet you the only direction it'll move towards is that of resentment festering in the present that'll soon ripen into collective disaster.
Far too many South Africans lack (or refuse) self-reflecting tendencies and have a blame orientated psychological state. It is always someone's' fault but mine. We've an unrepentant self-possessed pathological view of things. This probably means the true leader to take us forward will have to come with gifts of a psychologist to the political task. But our experience shown that quality leaders are few and far apart. This brings me to the issue of our former president Thabo Mbeki.
Most black people think Mbeki was a fallible but capable character, who recognised the transformative approach needed by our times. As a leader he had serious short-comings but had great insight of what is required to stir South Africa towards confronting its challenges, against false comfort zones that are not sustainable. He is a brilliant man, perhaps to much of a scheming strategist, but a visionary. As a president he was thoughtful and diligent but lacked political leadership qualities. Political leadership requires operation by instinct; Mbeki reasoned too much, albeit with flawed outcomes sometimes. What he lacked reflects more on personality issues than anything else.
For one he could have been more considerate and open to suggestions, and arguably less sure of himself. In the end not even his intelligence could protect him from being influenced by the anger of the past most South Africans are victim to. Methinks it unfair to judge him by the racist politics of a mobile black petite bourgeoisie that saw an opportunity of rescuing itself from déclassement and proletarianisation in his call for real transformation of our society.
Perhaps I must reveal, since it seem to matter to other people, that I've never been a member of any political party until the establishment of Cope (and as far as I'm aware Thabo Mbeki is a committed member of the ANC). Indeed, my sympathies and vote went to the ANC before Cope was established. Like Mandela I'm against the domination of one by another, whether based on racial, gender, economic, or class. This is why I accuse the ANC government of limiting democracy by not being sufficiently attentive to minority concerns for instance.
They've not yet learnt that the plurality of democracy mandates an indispensable condition of not only empowering the voice of majority, but sensitivity to minority concerns also. This is why at Cope we think things like BBBEE, as necessary as they may be, fall short when they do not include, say, white people who are in the same condition as the black poor majority that need economic upliftment. Hence Cope calls rather for a Grassroots Economic Empowerment approach (GEE) to properly address all our needs.
There's another misnomer about Western Civilisation, which I would like to answer using the words from the 1905 open letter of Kelly Miller (a professor of mathematics during the beginning of the last century) to the American white Southern novelist Thomas Dixon of dubious racist views.
Refuting the familiar claim that "the Negro lives in the light of the white man's civilization" Miller asserted that "White man's civilization is as much a misnomer as the white man's multiplication table. It is the equal inheritance of anyone who can appropriate and apply it." And it is based on amalgamation of efforts of different races through different epochs of history.
What is commendable in the mode of thinking that is predominantly Occidental is the drive of progressive spirit that transformed this learning into useful technology for human advancement, even if not all of it for the good of the world all the time. What now is called Western civilisation clearly does not have Caucasian origins. Unfortunately there is a lot of ignorant and obnoxious white people, a sample of which we have enough of in this website, who think otherwise.
One of the lessons South Africans need to learn is that culture and learning have no colour, and that progress comes through an anti-proprietary notion of cosmopolitanism that recognises no monopoly, nor special proprietary rights where ideas are concerned. Progressive cultures are never a "discrete organic wholes embodying a nation's blood but composite, impure assemblages, created in reciprocal exchange with other cultures." Intercultural reciprocity is the only path towards progressivism and enlightenment.
This is why it is imperative that we follow closely the spirit of our constitution, and the anthem that calls for us to be united in order to stand. Those who do not want to be part of a united South Africa, albeit in diversity, are working against our constitution and aspirations. Amazingly they seem to regard this offence very lightly.
I might be wrong, but I get the feeling that far too many white people in this country are still caught up in racist anti-barbarian propaganda that goes as far as Aeschylus's Persians, and the whole attitudinal thrust spawning from the likes of Herodotus's Histories eventually playing on our shores with the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck and his crew. Until this changes we will never turn the tide. And that is what depresses me.
Mphuthumi Ntabeni is a Cape Town based freelance writer. He is editor of COPE's website for the Cape Town Metro - www.copetown.org/
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