Constitutional Hill

Race

You strike a pig, you strike a Broederbonder

Nov 14th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
132 comments

Die Afrikanerbond is an organisation who (much like Communist Parties in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism) opportuinistically changed its name – it used to be called the Broederbond - perhaps because during the apartheid years the Broederbond was a reviled secret organisation to which one had to belong in order to get ahead in politics (the National Party sort of politics, that is), the civil service or the education system. It also helped for a company to have a member of the Broederbond on its Board of Directors because that made it far easier to score tenders from the apartheid government.

It worked a bit like Black Economic Empowerment does these days, except it was all done in secret and people who belonged to the Broederbond were not allowed to tell anyone – even their wives (only men could join) – about their membership. They had to invent “Rapportreiers vergaderings” or Bible study classes or come up with other lies to keep their dirty little secret from their Vroue Landbou Unie and the Jong Dames Dinamiek wives. It was an organisation based on lies and deceit. I do not know whether they had a secret handshake or whether they were required to tickle each other in unspeakable places to demonstrate their allegiance to the cause, but I do know that the Broederbond was not a friend of open, transparent and accountable government.

The Broederbond was often seen as the group that provided the intellectual support for the apartheid policies of the National Party. This might sound like a misnomer – a bit like saying an organisation provided the Nazi’s with democratic credentials – but apparently the leaders of the Broederbond were slightly less dim-witted than the ordinary National Party faithful and the leaders who could make rousing speeches about the Rooi Gevaar and the Swart Gevaar but were seldom the sharpest tool in the shed.

Becoming a leader of the Broederbond bestowed on one untold political influence and prestige. If one were then also a leader in the Dutch Reform Church – which was widely known as the National Party at prayer – one had truly made it in the world of apartheid hit squads, a world of torture and murder and corruption. Come to think of it, it operated a bit like the Limpopo Government does under Premier Cassel Mathale: a secret organisation with political connections and influence that bestows prestige, untold wealth and influence over tenders and government policy on those who had been admitted to that august organisation.

The Afrikanerbond has fallen on hard times, what with their former patron the National Party long dead and a former leader, Marthinus van Schalwyk, now warming the ANC benches. But they emerged from their slumber to issue a statement about the Julius Malema disciplinary hearing in order to try and help revive Mr Malema’s political fortunes – by criticising him. (After all, being criticised by these guys is a bit like being savaged by a dead sheep. It’s like being criticised by former members of the Gestapo: can’t do one’s credibility too much harm amongst any reasonable, justice loving South Africans.)

They were very upset about the fact that the ANC disciplinary committee had not found Mr Malema guilty of the “very serious charge” of racism. Channelling PW Botha and Adriaan Vlok of the 1980ties the Broederbond… er … I mean Afrikanerbond fumed as follows:

With reference to the white population of South Africa, Mr Malema said: “We must take the land without paying. They took our land without paying. Once we agree they stole our land, we can agree they are criminals and must be treated as such,” he said to cheers from a crowd of about 3 000 people at the Galeshewe stadium, just outside Kimberley. IOL News – 9 May 2011….  Mr Malema’s inflammatory statements about minorities, calls for the nationalisation of land, banks and mines, and even subversive revolutionary talk are indicative of the momentum of the National Democratic Revolution, within certain factions in the ANC. Our concern is that Mr Malema propagates an anarchistic form of revolution. The ANC’s flirtation with revolution can have unintended consequences for a country such as South Africa.

Now, I do not believe that all land should be taken from white South Africans without paying for it. After all, the Constitution allows for an orderly land-redistribution plan (which does NOT require the implementation of the ridiculous willing-buyer willing-seller policy). Taking land that essentially belongs to the banks who had provided the mortgage to the buyer without paying for it will probably not be very good for the economy.

Most white South Africans who now own land bought the land (mostly with the assistance from a bank mortgage) from other white people who might or might not have stolen the land themselves. That is why our Constitution – in a delicate balancing act – requires orderly land redistribution but does not allow for expropriation without any compensation.

Although most white people did not steal anybody’s land and bought any land they might own on credit, this does not mean they did not benefit from the colonial and apartheid policies on land theft. Most white people – unlike most black South Africans – could obtain loans from banks, who would often not give credit to black South Africans in the past. They could buy land cheaply because fewer people (essentially only white South Africans) were chasing more land (essentially 80% of the land in the country), driving down prices in a system of supply and demand.

In any case, most black South Africans were not allowed to buy property in more than 80% of the country “owned” (or, putting it differently, “stolen”) by whites. And when a sweet deal came up which allowed Broederbond types to acquire land cheaply, black South Africans could not benefit from this. So thirty years ago when all those lovely cottages at Clifton (now selling for a cool R20 million) was sold for R25000 each, no black person benefited from that cosy arrangement.

Ok, the Oppenheimers and those who own De Beers might have stolen some land and some people might still own land which was originally stolen by their forefathers and mothers, but most of us living in cities never stole any land. This does not mean that many of us might not have acquired the land cheaply because we were members of the Broederbond and were tipped off about economic development plans or because we could exploit the apartheid policies of the state to our benefit (as many Broederbonders so handsomely did).

But if we interpret Mr Malema’s statement as meaning that much of the land now mostly in the hands of whites were originally stolen by (admittedly other) whites from the indigenous population of South Africa, Malema is not that far off the mark. Saying this does not make one a racist.  Although Mr Malema has made other remarks demonstrating racial prejudices that are not reconcilable with the values and rights enshrined in the Constitution, this statement – although provocative and over the top – is by far not the worst.

But one would understand why the Beroederbond types would become uncomfortable about such a statement: it contains a kernel of truth that exposes the lie that whites – even those who murdered and tortured and oppressed black South Africans - have always hogged the moral high ground and that the ANC is the real villain of past, present and future South Africa. Mr Malema, for all his terrible bombast and populism, has hit a nerve with this statement. He has thrown a rock into a bush and the pig hiding in that bush (our dear Afrikanerbond) is now squealing in pain. Let them squeal.

Why the taalbulle will destroy Afrikaans

Nov 8th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
188 comments

I am a bit nervous to raise the topic. People get very, very cross when one says the “wrong” thing about it. A bit like Gareth Van Onselen when one criticises Helen Zille. (Remember Gareth, that self-righteous guy from the DA who now writes a self-righteous column in Business Day chock full of his own pedestrian prejudices? Sadly, I have not had a call from him for ages. He must be too busy crafting his 150 word gems for the newspaper to engage in friendly little chats in which he tries to convince me that white is black and black is white and that I am lying by insisting on the opposite.)

In any case, they phone you and (without knowing you from a bar of soap) start insulting you and tell you what a useless excuse for a human being you are. They might even pour a cup of tea over your head or assault you — but only if you are lucky. If you are unlucky, well, you guessed it, they will force you to watch recordings of Steve Hofmeyer performing at Huisgenoot Skouspel, or some such event. They complain bitterly about how they have been persecuted since 1994 (usually calling from next to the swimming pool at their house or from a brand new top of the range car masquerading as a truck). They call you a self-hating Afrikaner and a communist (or, worse, an ANC lackey) and a useful idiot (not knowing that they are quoting Joseph Stalin).

And all this because you might have suggested that the Afrikaans taalstryders making a living out of whipping up anxiety and fear about the demise of the Afrikaans language are at best opportunistic exploiters making a fast buck out of the fear and misery of others and at worst just pining for the good old days of apartheid when they were in power and could stuff up the country all by themselves.

But here goes. On Sunday, the main headline in Rapport (the Afrikaans version of the Sunday Times - only far more, you know, white, and with more headlines about Rugby and about NG Kerk infighting about the existence of the devil and whether dominees should be allowed to exorcise said devil) screamed: “GEE TERUG ONS TAAL!” (Give us back our language!) It told the story of some “brave” Afrikaners who are taking on the University of Stellenbosch, allegedly because that University is not ensuring that lectures are predominantly or exclusively conducted in Afrikaans (with sign language interpreters at hand to accommodate black students).

Some lecturers want to attract the best students of all races to study at Stellenbosch (something that is not happening at the moment) and want to appoint the best lecturers to teach at the institution (as it recently did when it appointed the brilliant Prof Achille Mbembe in the Sociology Department), but this would not be possible if everyone was required to speak and lecture most of their courses in Afrikaans. They are called the verraaiers or hensoppers or bootlickers of the new elite (in private they are said to lick other parts of the anatomy of the new elite too).

Others wish to ensure that the University remains dominantly and proudly Afrikaans, which would relegate it to the status of a second or third tier parochial institution for the children of whites (including, ironically, many English speaking whites whose children attend Stellenbosch University because it remains overwhelmingly white) and a few coloured students from the platteland.  They claim the University does not need to attract black students (and it is sometimes implied that attracting black students would lower standards) because the Constitution protects language rights.

Afrikaners, they argue, have a right to their own Volkstaat-like University in pretty Stellenbosch where their children could study (and drink lots of red wine), free from the evils of affirmative action that would open up the university to black students and staff. In the eyes of this group, only Afrikaners (they are still debating whether Afrikaans speaking coloureds are Afrikaners or not) should continue to benefit from affirmative action — just as they have benefited from affirmative action for many decades after the rise of the National Party. Standards would be maintained by forging links with some of the better Universities in the Netherlands and Belgium, and embarking on joint projects about multilingualism and how to run a country without a government.

Well, at first it might appear as if this second group have a point. After all, section 6(1) of the South African Constitution states that there are eleven official languages in South Africa, namely Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu. However, because the ANC negotiators were much better at their job than the old National Party negotiators, this section says much less than the Volkstaters would like to think.

Section 6(2) recognises the “historically diminished use and status of the indigenous languages of our people”, and places a duty on the state to take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of these languages (somthing the state has not done at all over the past 18 years). Because Afrikaans has not been historically diminished (it was relentlessly promoted during the apartheid years and is therefore still one the most understood and spoken languages in South Africa – along with English and isiZulu – and hence does not fall within the ambit of this provision.

Moreover section 6(3) states that the national government and provincial governments may use any particular official languages for the purposes of government, taking into account usage, practicality, expense, regional circumstances and the balance of the needs and preferences of the population as a whole or in the province concerned; but the national government and each provincial government must use at least two official languages. All official languages must enjoy “parity of esteem and must be treated equitably”.

This does not mean that languages should be treated equally — the term “parity of esteem”, borrowed from the Irish Constitution with a little help from Kader Asmal, means far less than equal treatment. It means that they must be treated fairly, given the economic, political and social context. Given the systematic promotion of Afrikaans during apartheid, given the dominance of English as a world language (for the time being at least) and given the neglect of other indigenous languages over the years, these sections might well mean that other indigenous languages had to be promoted vis-a-vis Afrikaans.

If Parliament adopts the National Language Bill now before Parliament and the national government finally formulates a national language policy regarding the use of official languages for government purposes (as required by section 4 of that Bill), the taalstryders  might get a shock. Other indigenous languages might well — very legitimately — be preferred above Afrikaans in this language policy, the latter being a language who had been very much affirmed and promoted for 50 years during the apartheid rule.

Referring to Stellenbosch particularly, taalbulle argues that the right to receive education in the official language or languages of one’s choice in public educational institutions is guaranteed in section 29 of the Constitution. They fail to note that section 29(2) also states that this will only happen “where that education is reasonably practicable”.

In order to ensure the effective access to, and implementation of, this right, the state must consider all reasonable educational alternatives, including single medium institutions, taking into account: equity; practicability; and the need to redress the results of past racially discriminatory laws and practices.

Section 30 underscores this point by stating that while everyone has the right to use the language and to participate in the cultural life of their choice, these rights may not be exercised in a manner inconsistent with any provision of the Bill of Rights – including the provisions of the non-discrimination clause. Using a language policy that would exclude many black South Africans from accessing the excellent education at Stellenbosch is therefore not permitted by the Constitution as it infirnges on section 9(3) of the Constitution, read with section 30.

Where a University teaches some courses exclusively in Afrikaans, the effect of this policy would be to exclude many black South Africans from studying there and from teaching at this institution. Ironically, as long as Stellenbosch remains a University where quality education is provided and quality research is conducted (as it presently still is), the effective exclusion of black South Africans form the University through any language policy would contravene the non-discrimination clause in the Constitution. This is because the policy deprives many black South Africans from accessing a very high standard of education they might not receive at many other Universities and this disadvantages black students and staff.

This fight is only going to end one way and that is with the so called verraaiers winning the argument and the fight. If the taalbulle wanted to have a shot at retaining their white privileges at Stellenbosch they should have ensured many years ago that slightly less dim-witted people negotiated on their behalf at the Constitutional Assembly.

This is not to say that ons taal will disappear. On my iPod I have music from the early days of the Afrikaans music revival (Bernoldus Niemand, Koos Kombius, Johannes Kerkorrel), from avant-garde bands like Buckfever Underground and Die Antwoord, from Jan Blohm and Karen Zoid. On my bookshelf I look at books by Marlene van Niekerk, Ingrid Winterbach, Antjie Krog, Johann de Lange, Loftus Marais and Deon Meyer. When I want to express my anger in a colourful way, I choose one of the wonderfully expressive Afrikaans phrases available to me (but is unfortunately not polite enough to repeat here).

Ag, if only the taalbulle would stop fighting for the taal things might still turn out well for Afrikaans. Because with friends like them, who needs enemies?

As things stand, they are giving Afrikaans a bad name with their selfish and jingoistic crusade. By painting themselves as victims (“met ‘n wit brood onder elke arm vasgeklem” – “with a white bread clutched under each arm” - as my mother would have said), they are creating the impression that Afrikaans is being used as a proxy to try and retain the dominant white status of Stellenbosch University. Down that road lies permanent ruin for our taal.

If you want to save ons taal, why not write a poem, a short story or even an email in beautiful Afrikaans? Teach your children to use the language well. Engage in real debates – in Afrikaans, English or another indigenous language – about the real issues that face our nation: poverty, crime, corruption, racism, discrimination, homophobia, homelessness, hunger. Stop protecting the ill-gotten privileges of the apartheid years and stop acting in ways that will give the appearance of wanting to protect these privileges. Become an ambassador for the language through words and deeds – including words and deeds that demonstrate an understanding of the horrors of our past and its effect on the lingering injustices in our country. But please, spare me the moans and groans about the need to “save” the language at Stellenbosch University.

On “Indians”, “Africans” and a lack of emotional intelligence

Oct 24th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
89 comments

Almost all of us have had a moment (well, probably far more than one moment) when we were asked an impossibly difficult question or were subjected to an arrogant put-down or cutting remark, but we could not think of the witty, incisive or clever retort that would have saved the day for us. Only much later — after feeling the sting of humiliation for a few minutes or hours — would we think of the clever or witty thing we could have said in response to the question or attack.

I would guess that many candidates interviewed by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) for judicial posts must have kicked themselves after an interview for not being able to provide the killer answer to members of the JSC to deal with the often hostile questions put to him or her.

One would have thought that Judge Isaac Madondo might have had such a moment during his interview before the JSC for the position of KwaZulu-Natal Judge President and that he would subsequently have thought what he could have said to answer the particularly tricky question in a more astute manner. Sadly, he had either not reflected on the matter; or he had, but had not been able to conjure up a more palatable answer.

Judge Madondo was vying for the post along with acting Judge President of KwaZulu-Natal, Chiman Patel. During his interview Judge Madondo told the commissioners that he did not think an Indian candidate would be suitable to fill the position of Judge President. When IFP MP Koos van der Merwe asked him if it was time to appoint an Indian judge president, Madondo replied, without hesitation: “I don’t think so. We still have things to address, imbalances, all kinds of things which need more insight, which a person who is not [a black] African cannot be privy to…. We were oppressed, but not in the same way.”

Now, this was by no means a subtle, carefully thought through or endearing answer. It could easily be read as the cynical deployment of apartheid race categories in a shameless attempt to realise one’s very personal ambitions: playing the race card to get a job one would not have gotten but for the fact that one happened to be African. On its face, the statement suggests that Judge Madondo believes that Indians have not suffered as much as Zulus during the apartheid era and that this meant that a person who used to be classified as Indian during apartheid cannot become Judge President in KwaZulu-Natal today. The impression created is that the judge is a bit of a racial bigot.

Yet, his answer contains a kernel of truth which an agile mind would easily have been able to mould into a more palatable answer without shying away from the fact that our Constitution allows race to be taken into account by those who must decide on the appointment of judges.

A better answer would clearly have been that any person — no matter what his or her race — who is committed to the values enshrined in the Constitution and has the necessary legal skills and leadership abilities and enjoys the support of his or her colleagues would be suitable for appointment as Judge President. One could then have added (pretending to be humble and unambitious) that one believed that as an African with considerable legal experience and a strong commitment to access to justice, one would bring special insights and skills to the job if one were to be appointed by the JSC.

One could have continued to quote section 174(2) of the Constitution, which states that the need for the judiciary to reflect broadly the racial and gender composition of South Africa must be considered when judicial officers are appointed. Noting that race can never be the only criteria taken into account when appointments are considered and rejecting the idea that a person could be disqualified from appointment merely for being an Indian or any other race, one could nevertheless have emphasised the fact that one believed that it was important to give due weight to section 174(2).

One could have added that this did not meant that one believed that every judge was a prisoner of his or her race or gender or that one believed that all women thought the same, all Africans thought the same, or that all Indians thought the same. On the contrary, one could have said, it is racist and deeply demeaning to Africans and Indians (and to men and women) to assume that a person is no more and no less than the sum total of his or her racial or gender identity, to assume that each person has no autonomy to decide for himself or herself how to respond to a particular situation. Nevertheless, one could have added, it cannot be denied that on the whole one’s life experiences and one’s cultural background and one’s religious beliefs would often play some (but not an overarching) role in how one behaved and what kind of manager one might become.

This would have been a perfectly acceptable answer not shying away from the fact that race does and should play some role when considering appointments to the bench. However Judge Madondo did not provide this answer in his interview and neither did he provide a similar answer much later after he had had a chance to reflect on the matter.

I thought, giving the judge the benefit of the doubt, that the crudeness of his original answer and his inability to discuss the complex issue of racial transformation in the judiciary in a nuanced manner may have been excused because of the stress associated with a JSC interview. On reflection he would surely be able to conjure up the better, constitutionally valid, and more subtle answer — as we all do when we are caught out and we have time to reflect on what we might have said.

But to my surprise, this is not what happened, leaving us with the impression that the judge is not capable of producing the more subtle and constitutionally viable version of his answer. In an interview in the Sunday Times, conducted after his remarks had made headlines, the judge made an even bigger hash of the questions put to him. Here is a sample of his responses:

But you don’t think an Indian judge should be JP? No, that’s misquoted altogether.

You were asked if it was time to appoint an Indian JP and you said, “I don’t think so.” Is that what you said? Yes. I stated my reasons.

So that’s an accurate quote? It’s out of context. What I was saying, in terms of the demographics, I don’t think so. Secondly, there are a number of hardships among the people who suffered. A person from another race may not be in a position to know them in the same way as I do. That’s what I was saying. Not because he’s an Indian.

Because he’s not black? No, that’s nonsense. If someone thinks like that, it’s nonsense.

You’re saying that, as an Indian, he doesn’t have the same insight? Do you have an insight of the rural people in the villages? Do you? Unless you have an insight into the way they live and the hardship of their experience …

So should only Zulus be appointed to the bench in KZN? I don’t even want to answer that question because it doesn’t make sense at all.

Wouldn’t only Zulus have that kind of insight? No. I was not saying that. I’m talking about equal representation in terms of the demographics; I was not saying only Zulus must be appointed judges in KZN. That’s nonsense.

It is not clear why insight of rural people will make one a better Judge President. It might well add something to one’s abilities to perform well as a judge dealing with matters normally brought to court by rural people — after all, understanding the lives of those who appear before one may (but does not always) lead to decisions that are wiser and better informed. But a Judge President’s job is mostly administrative in nature and he or she will seldom if ever hear cases in which the litigants are rural village dwellers. The Judge President decides who is allocated which case and ensures the smooth running of his court, but how his African background would make him  better at this job is not immediately clear. If he had the backing of the majority of judges or of all the African judges in his division, this might have been relevant, but he does not so his race could not be relevant in this manner.

In any case the failure of the Judge to provide a credible and nuanced answer to an admittedly tricky question — not once, but twice — leaves one puzzled. Either judge Madondo has very crude views on race and racial transformation or he lacks the emotional intelligence to reflect on and revise his answers for the better. Either way, based on his responses to the JSC and the Sunday Times, it is not clear that he would make a suitable Judge President for the KwaZulu-Natal or any other division of the High Court.

Why define myself as part of an “Afrikaner” minority?

Oct 11th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
224 comments

There is a great paradox at play in political discussions and arguments about the manner in which “Afrikaners” and other “ethnic minorities” should position themselves and should behave in post-apartheid South Africa. This discussion has recently exploded into the open in the aftermath of judge Colin Lamont’s “Kill the Boer” judgment.

First, Adriaan Basson, Deputy Editor of City Press  wrote an open letter to Kallie Kriel, the CEO of Afriforum, about the manner in which the organisation has positioned itself as a defender of “minority Afrikaner interests”. Basson berated Kriel because:

[Y]ou see yourself firstly as part of a minority group, whose constitutional and human rights are being disregarded by the ANC. The premise of AfriForum’s campaigns is one of victimhood. You regard the Afrikaners as a group under threat, a people whose basic rights to expression, association and movement are constantly being undermined by the black majority.

Basson suggested that one should position oneself as a South African first and only then, as an afterthought perhaps, as a person who happens to be Afrikaans speaking and white. Basson seems to suggest that “Afrikaners” should not view themselves as a minority at all, but if they do, they should recognise that “Afrikaners must be one of the most powerful, wealthy and diverse minorities on the planet”. In Business Day, Steven Friedman, similarly criticised the “Kill the Boer” judgment because it reifies the white minority’s economic and cultural dominance.

“Afrikaners”, this group argue, should not claim a special status for themselves as they are relatively privileged as a group and are thriving — both economically and culturally — in democratic South Africa. There are so many other, far more pressing, political and ethical issues that people in South Africa should be concerned about — hunger, unemployment, homelessness, to name but a few. In order to make South Africa a more just and equitable place, “Afrikaners” should rather make common cause with marginalised and oppressed groups. They should change their minds and their hearts and should stop acting liking perpetual victims — stop exuding the we-can-never-forgive-blacks-for-apartheid mentality — as this mentality will just have a polarising effect on politics in South Africa.

Others, including Kriel, Wessel Ebersohn and Herman Giliomee point to the deep sense of anxiety and fear amongst many “Afrikaners” about their future in South Africa. These feelings relate to fears about the “Afrikaner’s” continued economic prosperity and the physical safety of members of this “minority” as well as an unease or even deep unhappiness regarding the loss of status of their language (Afrikaans) and their diminished political influence.

They warn against the totalising effect of an ideology that valorises “unity” and abhors difference and diversity. If I understand these arguments correctly, they are based on the premise that “Afrikaners” are indeed very different from other South Africans, because of their race, because of their language, because of their wealth (and perhaps – but this is never stated – because of their intimate involvement in the oppression of black South Africans during apartheid) and that people like Basson must be naive to think that one could be a South African first and an “Afrikaner” second.

The paradox is that many people who valorise “Afrikaner” identity in this way and see “Afrikaners” as physically or existentially threatened, also warn that one of the greatest threats to our non-racial constitutional democracy (and, by implication, to the “Afrikaner” minority) is the tendency of many black Africans in South Africa to see themselves as black first and as South Africans second. The very people who fearfully condemn the deployment of an ethnic or racialised identity by black Africans when they criticise affirmative action, claim a semi-racialised ethnic identity for themselves and argue for its preservation and protection through militant legal and political action.

Why is it acceptable for “Afrikaners” to embrace their “Afrikaner” identity and view themselves as “Afrikaners” first and South Africans second, but it is not acceptable for black South Africans to embrace their racial identity and to view themselves as Africans first and South Africans second? After all, “Afrikaners” were the main (but not only) beneficiaries of affirmative action during the last 40 years of apartheid and used their semi-racialised ethnic or cultural identity in the most devastating way to oppress the majority of South Africans. It is dishonest and conceptually treacherous to claim that this identity is somehow more benign than the racial identity that some black Africans embrace. Either identity politics itself should be problematised and its effects minimised or its should be embraced, with all the negative consequences that flow from this for a supposed “minority” identity group.

Some might argue that there is a difference as “Afrikaners” is a minority and black Africans is a majority, but as Adriaan points out, the vast majority of the members of this so called minority have done rather well in the democratic era. There has been an explosion in creativity amongst “Afrikaners”, finally freed from the shackles of Afrikaner Nationalism. Goodness, there is even a DSTV channel dedicated to Afrikaans music (some of it admittedly rather pedestrian, but some of it hard-assed, vibrant and moving).

But the fact is that identity politics is popular in South Africa because it seems to work. If one wished to resist oppression, economic exploitation and white racism, one would be wise to embrace an African identity and to advocate the implementation of special legal and political measures to “protect” or “advance” the identity group one feels one belongs to. Similarly, if, as an “Afrikaner”, one wished to harness the economic power amassed on the back of apartheid and if one wanted to be taken seriously by the ANC, one would be well-advised to show a united “Afrikaner” face to the so called “enemy”: the black majority. President Jacob Zuma has never gone out of his way to meet with progressive “Afrikaners” like Adriaan Basson, but he did join Steve Hofmeyer – that “Afrikaner” opportunist par excellance – for a braai.

Of course, if one has far more sympathy for Adriaan Basson’s view (as I do), one is not completely left off the hook. We usually talk about the past and the devastating effects of apartheid and many of us support some kind of race-based affirmative action. Yet, we claim that these identity categories (on which race-based affirmative action policies must rely and which are perpetuated by those very policies), should stop defining who we are and should be no more than one of the many distinct factors that help to paint a picture of who we are.

We like to say that there are no ethnic minorities or majorities in South Africa and that there are only temporary political majorities and minorities. We argue that we might happen to be white and Afrikaans speaking, but that this does not define who we are. We are also male or female, gay or straight, rich or not so rich, HIV positive or not, ANC supporters or DA supporters, liberals or socialists, readers of good books or watchers of Glee, rugby fanatics or kwaito bedonnerd, nature lovers and city slickers.

However, I would contend that there is a fundamental difference between the two positions. Given the fact that South Africa is a country still haunted by the economic and social effects of racial discrimination and apartheid, given that whiteness as an ideology is deeply implicated in the continued marginalisation and oppression of black South Africans and given, further, that the white minority in general and “Afrikaners” in particular benefitted enormously as a group from apartheid, it is both ethically and practically unconscionable for whites in general and “Afrikaners” in particular to define themselves as a victimised and threatened minority in order to try and retain some of the special privileges they acquired during apartheid.

On the other hand, the effects of past and ongoing racism and discrimination against black South Africans can only begin to be addressed if well-designed and targeted race-based corrective measures are enthusiastically pursued. While some of us who agree with Adriaan Basson will therefore support race-based corrective measures, we do so not because we are ideologically or emotionally wedded to the identity categories that the “Afrikaner” group seem to valorise (in other words, we are not wedded to the idea that race or ethnicity is the defining characteristic that determines our moral worth), but rather because we believe that for the moment the deployment of race is required to right the wrongs of the past.

Our end goal might be to move away from a society in which there are seemingly permanent and monolithic racial or ethnic minorities and majorities, but we understand that this goal will not be achieved if the fundamentally unjust and skewed racialised division of economic and social opportunities available to people of different races in our country are not addressed.

Like Adriaan,  I also see myself as a South African who happens to be white and Afrikaans-speaking, one who refuses to trade on his semi-racialised ethnic identity to gain special protection or retain for myself or my group special privileges. I proudly speak Afrikaans, I read Afrikaans novels and listen to Afrikaans music, I have attended the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (and as long as I stayed away from the Huisgenoot tent – o jirre, that place is scary! - and the more macho drinking establishments, I had a great time there), but I feel I have less in common with Kallie Kriel than with Jay Naidoo, Jacob Dlamini, Dikgang Moseneke or S’busiso Zikode, the President of the  Abahlali baseMjondolo.

I do not wish to be part of an ethnic minority, some of whose members seem to be overwhelmed by a permanent sense of victimhood and grievance because of their loss of political power and influence in South Africa. Rather, my humanity is defined by how I interact with other South Africans of all races, genders, sexual orientation and classes and how I respond to the vast injustices I see around me — much of it caused by the lingering effects of a system put in place and maintained by people who proudly and chauvinistically called themselves “Afrikaners”.

Revisiting “whiteness”

Sep 30th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
156 comments

Earlier this week I took part in a workshop at Wits University where the timely and brave article of Samantha Vice on white shame and political humility was discussed. This is an edited version of my remarks at the workshop. Regular readers of this Blog might note that I have modified my views on Vice’s piece slightly.

The arguments put forward by Samantha Vice regarding the position of white people and whiteness in South Africa, reminds me of the intervention in 1997 of conceptual artist Kendel Geers at a right wing celebrations at Fort Klapperkop outside Pretoria.

Geers had declared the event an “art happening” but an angry spokesperson for the right wing organisations denied this, stating that their celebration was definitely not art. To which Geers responded: “They cannot un-art themselves.”

I am sure this was not the intention of Samantha Vice’s intervention, but I fear that her intervention might well be read as constituting an attempt to deal with the racial hierarchy in South Africa as yearning to “un-white” herself and others; in other words, to do the impossible, namely to live well in this strange place despite our whiteness, despite being the continued beneficiaries of privilege.

The problem seems to me that Samantha might have misdiagnosed or only partly correctly diagnosed the ethical dilemma that we have to live with, that we will continue to have to live with and that no work on the self will allow us to escape from confronting day after day, hour after hour.

As I see it, because Samantha focuses on the self, on a project of remaking oneself with an awareness of the structural privilege one embodies because of one’s race and an awareness of the habits of white privilege that ineluctably forms part of who one is, because she asks how we — as white South Africans – can live (and perhaps can even dare to hope to live well) in what she calls this strange place, given the structural privilege that we enjoy, that we live every minute of every day because we are white, she misses or ignores the broader context in which each of us live here in South Africa. This South Africa, I contend, is a strange place but perhaps not only or exactly in the way envisaged by Samantha.

If we want to engage with the question of how we can live in this strange place, I contend, we need to look at South Africa not only and exclusively as a place haunted by racism, racial discrimination and by the (admittedly pervasive) problem of whiteness. Yes our lives and our selves are haunted by race — how can it not be, given our history — but it is also haunted by many other ethical concerns. These concerns may be affected by race but not exclusively so.

We live in a country where some people live and others die because some (because of their wealth) have access to the best medical care and others (because they are poor and rely on the erratic public health system) do not. We live in a world in which some children have access to the best schooling which provide them with the life chances and opportunities denied others whose schooling is dismal. We live in a world in which some gay men and lesbians live in fear of humiliation and are raped and killed because of their sexual orientation. We live in a world where some of us has never gone hungry while others often do not know where their next meal might come from and how they might feed their children.

In the light of these injustices — yes, all haunted by the ghosts of our racialised  past but not exclusively and uniquely  following the logic of race — one must ask whether this project of working on the self — of, in essence trying to work on oneself to become a better person, a person that feels appropriate shame for being white and being part of a system that has benefited one and continues to benefit one materially and also in non-material ways by bestowing on one a certain social status and power because of the colour of one’s skin — is not essentially (despite Samantha’s pointed protestations) an essentially narcissistic and slightly self-indulgent one?

Shame, guilt and agent regret seem like a rather hopelessly inadequate responses to the very real and serious larger ethical challenges faced by any middle class person in South Africa – even when the ethical call is more acutely and insistently addressed to white South Africans? Surely this project of turning inward and of working on the self is ethically deeply problematic? Our habits of white privilege, the social capital we embody because of our white skins, and the consequences this has for our fellow South Africans is just part of the larger picture. A more nuanced understanding of the problem of trying to live an ethical life in this strange place is required.

I worry that this turning inward, this essentially self-centred project will focus too much on the self, on the WHITE self, rather than focusing on the system that produced whiteness and the racial hierarchy that is continually being perpetuated by all of us. Can one really, by turning inward, escape from the very system that produces the racial hierarchy and can one really escape from being complicit in it’s perpetuation? By turning inwards and by focusing so obsessively on ones shame and ones whiteness, is one not affirming the racial hierarchy and the very structures that produce white privilege which one needs to undermine and subvert in order to begin to address the structures that produce “whiteness” and “blackness” and continues to do so in a hierarchical manner? This is not only a personal problem but also a structural problem. How does one address whiteness without perpetuating the racial hierarchy?

 Can one even begin to escape one’s whiteness? Gesturing at Geers, I would contend that one cannot “un-white” oneself.

Samantha Vice also advocates for white people at least a partial silence and a political humility which would prevent white people from engaging in the politics of the day. White people have power. When they speak, they speak with the authority and arrogance that inevitably flows from their whiteness. Hence, says Vice, it is morally risky to speak publicly in our society if one is a white person. I have three responses to that:

First, do we not have the duty to take this risk? Is it not a bit precious — showing perhaps inadvertently too much concern for ones own ethical purity and ones status as a not so bad person — by not wanting to take risks and not wanting to make mistakes?  Is this not a move to avoid exposing oneself to ridicule, hatred, criticism, accusations of racism and arrogance, of sexism and homophobia, which might well be levelled against some of us by others who, surely, we must be careful not wish to construct as utterly powerless victims of whiteness and of what white people do and say?

Surely, despite the structural inequalities and the effects of past and ongoing racism and racial discrimination in our country, it would be highly problematic to hold that white people should be silent because this will be somehow respectful of black people and the powerlessness they experience in the face of white privilege? I do not experience black South Africans as powerless or being in need of my silence and I worry that believing that would be fundamentally patronising and disempowering towards black South Africans.

If I make a mistake, if I talk and my words are seeped in whiteness or the arrogance that is associated with white structural privilege, I know that I will be told so in no uncertain terms by others — and rightly so. And is this not a better way to work on the self? By engaging with the world, with fellow South Africans, by doing so in a manner that is fully aware of ones privilege, by taking the risks, by getting it wrong and reflecting on why one got it wrong and trying again and by demonstrating in word and deed that one is not the font of all wisdom? Is this not how we even begin to embark on a journey of becoming full and equal citizens in this country? Will the silence, then, not be a whitely silence? Silence can appear like a cop out, like and avoidance of the burden of having to take decisions and taking risks, and for taking responsibility for one’s whiteness and for inevitably getting it wrong and taking responsibility for the effects of structural privilege and for doing something about it?

Second, is silence not — whether one intends it to be seen in that way or not — already an attempt  at achieving a kind of inappropriate moral purity, a moral purity that a white person cannot achieve but that our whiteness and the ideology of whiteness has ingrained in us as being our due, as the natural state of being a white person? By being silent, does one nor rather narcissistically hold oneself up as, once again, better. As someone who deserves special consideration because of this noble attempt at goodness?

Third, this silence says Vice should go hand in hand with private acts of justice. But injustice is not only or even primarily about personal relationships and the injustices that result from our inability to interact with others in a responsible and ethically appropriate way. It is about structural problems, about the way in which our capitalist, radicalised, world and our society is organised and the failure of all of us — including our politicians — to take the steps that would begin to dismantle these structures that produce and perpetuate inequality, poverty, marginalization and oppression.

In conclusion, I wonder if this project does not assume  or take for granted the impossibility of being anything else but the sum total of ones racial identity? Does it not reinforce the logic of the apartheid constructed racial hierarchy, assuming that one is only and always exclusively white or black and that this is the sum total of our world and it’s ethical and other problems? But I am also a neighbour called on to show hospitality to my neighbour — even when that neighbour is a foreigner and it is impossible to show real hospitality — a lover, a teacher, an HIV positive middle class man, an Afrikaner who opposes Afriforum, a gay man who might well develop a crush on Julius Malema (if only he lost a few kilograms).

If we ask how we can live in this strange place, then each of us must remember that we — like everybody else in our society — is more than just representatives of our race. We cannot escape the ethical consequences of living in a deeply racist and unjust society and we must take responsibility for this and live with this. A personal project that turns inwards cannot and will not change this.

About the “Boksburg Bomber” and the “entanglement of colours”

Sep 14th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
107 comments

This is a (slightly edited) extract from the second part of the inaugural lecture delivered by me tonight at the University of Cape Town Law Faculty. The lecture relies on many themes first developed on this Blog and also incorporates some of the words first published here. The lecture is entitled: ”The past is unpredictable: race, redress and remembrance in the South African Constitution” (playing with a statement made by Evita Bezuidenhout that: “The future is certain – it’s the past that is unpredictable”) and engages with the question of how we can deal with necessary race-based corrective measures without perpetuating racialised thinking.

It proposes that we engage more seriously and in a nuanced manner with our apartheid past and suggests that this might assist us to deal with the effects of past and ongoing racism and racial discrimination (through the use of race-based redress measures) without getting transfixed by the racial catgories we have to rely on.

Herewith the extract:

In Jacob Dlamini’s book Native Nostalgia he tells many stories about growing up during the apartheid years in Katlehong, a township located 35 km east of Johannesburg and south of Germiston (not far from Alberton where I had the dubious honour of completing my primary school education).

Of course, when I was a primary school child during the height of apartheid, it would have been unthinkable for me to spend time in Katlehong and to get to know Dlamini, his mother or his friends. It would also have been legally impossible for Dlamini to attend the same relatively good school as I did and unthinkable that he would spend time with me in my family home in Alberton as a friend to get to know me, my mother or my friends.

One of the stories Dlamini tells of his childhood in Katlehong is about how the people living in his street listened to the radio broadcast of the world heavyweight boxing title fight in which Gerrie Coetzee (who hailed from nearby Boksburg and was hence known as the Boksburg Bomber) took on a black American, and how they all cheered on homeboy Gerrie, who, after all, grew up not too far from Katlehong.

I too listened to that fight broadcast over the radio, albeit to the Afrikaans and ridiculously biased commentary of Gerhard Viviers – all from the relative privilege of our whites only suburb of Brackenhurst in Alberton. And I too cheered on the Boksburg Bomber, albeit with my shouting father who was already slurring his words after one brandy too many.

We were worlds apart: one slightly bewildered white boy, living in the privileged comfort afforded to white middle class South Africans by the system of apartheid, one black boy subjected to the humiliation wrought by the system from which I was to benefit so handsomely. Yet to tell the full and nuanced story of our respective childhoods, it would be a mistake not to acknowledge this shared experience, because it reminds us that – apart from belonging to the apartheid era race categories imposed on us – our life experiences intersected and overlapped in sometimes surprising and other times shocking ways and that our lives (and who we became) were influenced by many factors apart from our respective races.

As Achille Mbembe has stated: “There is an ‘entanglement’ of colours in South Africa… There is no black history in South Africa that doesn’t involve whiteness. The history is an entanglement of colour lines.” Recognizing this entanglement and recognizing, further, that this entanglement occurred and continues to occur against the backdrop of white economic and social dominance, might assist us to take race (and the devastating effects of past and ongoing racism) seriously while safeguarding against the perpetuation of a society in which race is seen as the only relevant factor in determining who one is and where one fits in, a society in which race is essentialised.

This engagement with our history would be incomplete if it did not note that in terms of the Population Registration Act the state ensured that we had very different life experiences, that we were deemed to be different in every way. As a middle class white boy I was accorded a certain status which allowed me (unthinkingly, I must add) to enjoy the privileges that were associated with being a member of the economic, social and political dominant racial minority.

Later, of course, I discovered that one might also belong to other identity categories; that my sexual orientation and my HIV status could change my standing in society somewhat - from being an absolute insider to a person faced with the challenges associated with these other aspects of my identity, aspects which many in our society still insist belongs on the margins. I also discovered that other aspects of my identity – my whiteness, my economic and social privilege, my academic status – could mitigate against the deeply dehumanizing effects of the prejudices associated with those aspects of my identity (sexual orientation/HIV status) that would invite marginalisation or even rejection.

The point I wish to make is that when we reflect on race-based redress measures at institutions like UCT (an institution created by whites for whites all those years ago) and when the Constitutional Court engages with the question of whether a specific race-based redress measure is constitutionally compliant, the full complexity of our past and the history of each individual who still carries this past with them – no matter how some of us might protest that the past is behind us and that we have suddenly become race-blind and stripped of the social and economic privileges our white skins might still be affording us – must not be lost sight of.

I propose that the starting point for such a nuanced approach should be to recognise that the various identity categories – including race, including sexual orientation, including gender, including HIV status – are the product of a specific history and that they cannot be used to predict how individuals who are said to slot into these categories will behave, what their attitudes will be, and who they are as individuals. When we use these categories for purposes of redress we should do so ironically and in a contingent manner.

In other words, we should never use such categories as if they are “real”, in the sense of really saying something profound or true about any human being, all while acknowledging that the categories feel real to most people and that being assumed to be a member of one of the race categories will often have very real consequences – as  was so brutally illustrated by the fact that Eudy Simelane, a member of South Africa women’s national football team and an LGBT-rights activist, was raped and murdered in her hometown of KwaThema, Springs, Gauteng in 1998 because she was a women and she was a lesbian.

Second, a more nuanced deployment of such categories in legislation, policies and regulations is required. Apart from the category of race (which for the moment we have no choice but to rely on to help address the effects of past and ongoing racism and discrimination) we may want to add other considerations – along with the race of an individual – when we decide whether an individual should be the beneficiary of a specific programme of corrective measures.

The social and economic status of the individual and his or her parents; whether an individual is part of a first, second or third generation who has obtained secondary or tertiary education and the nature of that tertiary education (if any) received by his or her parents or grandparents; whether an individual grew up in a rural area or in the city; whether the individual is monolingual or speaks several South African languages; whether an individual attended a mud school in the Eastern Cape or a posh private school in Rondebosch; whether the individual is required to study in his or her home language or in a second or third language – these factors, along with many others, could all be considered as relevant (along with the race of an individual) when decisions about redress measures are made.

There must also other ways to deal with issues of redress. Who knows? What I do know is that we need to continue having a conversation about what will work best and that when we do so we ignore a critical but serious engagement with the past at our peril. When I talk about a conversation I do not mean a shouting match in which individuals retreat into the laager of their own apartheid era racial identities and shout abuse at others who they perceive to belong to a different apartheid race category, clinging to rigid and simplistic master narratives which the ghost of our apartheid past have fixed so firmly in many of our imaginations (even if many deny this).

In having this conversation it would be helpful if we could agree that it is important to take race and the need for racially-based redress seriously while also acknowledging that in doing so there is a danger that the use of apartheid era race categories will imprison us all in an apartheid of the mind.

This we can only do if we have a real and open discussion about what race did to all of us in the past (and continues to do to us today) and engage with the issue of how we can address the effects of race in the future; if we do not take part in the discussion as perpetual victims (of racism or of so called reverse-racism), but as equal, respectful human beings with agency and a unique take on life who believe and act like people who have the pride in themselves and the power to chart a new destiny that is fair and just for all — not just for those who belong to the same racial group we happen to believe that we belong to.

Why those punting “the radical middle way” are often not heard

Aug 3rd, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
79 comments

The response to the Eric Miyeni debacle has been depressing, to say the least. Predictably, all kinds of claims and counter-claims have been made, often dividing along racial lines with some defending the racial generalisations of Miyeni (either directly or indirectly), while others saw this as an opportunity to express their prejudices about black South Africans. It is as if the Miyeni debacle has become a Rorschach test of people’s prejudices and obsessions.

How can we understand this phenomenon?

The French philosopher and literary theorist Jean Francois Lyotard first suggested back in 1979 that one way to understand the world around us is to identify the often invisible or unquestioned “grand narratives” which are produced by specific cultures or societies to make sense of the world. In a modernist world, Lyotard argued, such narratives operate as great structuring (metaphysical) stories that are supposed to give meaning and make us understand all other events and interpretations around us.

These “grand narratives” are grand, large-scale theories and philosophies of the world, such as the progress of history, the knowability of everything by science, and the possibility of absolute freedom. Lyotard – writing from a late twentieth century Western perspective — argued that in the so called postmodern Western world people have ceased to believe that narratives of this kind are adequate to represent and contain us all. They have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micro-narratives.

But it seems to me that it is still rather handy for those of us living in the so called post-colonial global South to think about the way knowledge gets produced and ordered with reference to grand narratives. Because it is impossible to make sense of all the available information we are exposed to by focusing on each event and each piece of information afresh, we tend to deal with this information overload by discarding some facts and ideas and by fitting other facts and ideas into existing grand narratives. Although many of us might not even be aware of the existence of these grand narratives, we are slaves to them, because these narratives help shape our understanding of the world and the people and events in it.

One can argue about the mechanisms through which such grand narratives are produced. One may also quibble about whether such grand narratives are actually necessary tools to help us understand the world or rather a handy mechanism through which the powerful and dominant groups in society maintain their hegemonic position and achieve the subjugation of other cultures and societies.

But it seems to me that much of the disagreements in South Africa — disagreements about race and redress, about corruption, about the origins of injustice and the ways to deal with it, about the ways in which we talk about criticism of black politicians — stem from an adherence to different grand narratives by those,  on the one hand, who punt Western, liberal, race-blind, free market values and those, on the other hand,  who punt a kind of race-based nationalism and the importance of redress and/or revenge.

Those of us trying to find a radical middle way between these two extremes — usually by punting the struggle for social democracy and concerns for justice, economic equality and an anti-corruption stance, married to demands for the protection of individual rights to free speech and the right to be different — have a difficult time being heard and especially listened to because our ideas cannot rely on the support of strong grand narratives.

In South Africa there are two particularly dominant but fundamentally clashing grand narratives that vie for overall dominance.

On the one hand, there is the narrative influenced by a long history of colonial domination of Africa, a narrative of “darkest Africa” and “venal natives” who “cannot be trusted”, a narrative informed by the deeply ingrained fears which have been instilled at mothers knee with dark whispers of the Mau Mau and Dingaan, a narrative that has been informed by the insecurity experienced by the once dominant colonial minority.

This is a narrative that suggests that Africa is a basket case and that most Africans are corrupt, untrustworthy and lazy. When Julius Malema is reported by City Press to have taken bribes to secure tenders, this information can easily be slotted into this grand narrative. The news merely affirms what we are all supposed to know already — even if those who embrace this narrative are now often politically too savvy actually to speak of their beliefs in such a crude manner. Instead, sophisticated adherents to this grand narrative now often speak about their fears and prejudices in code — by bemoaning “dropping standards”, by wailing about “rampant crime”, or by complaining about how corruption hampers service delivery.

Miyeni probably got irritated by this response which he saw in the exposure of Malema’s alleged corruption, but instead of writing an intelligent expose of this attitude, he veered over into hate speech and a seeming condonation of corruption.

Former President Thabo Mbeki had a very special knack at identifying and exposing this specific and seemingly dominant grand narrative which he believed most (if not all) white South Africa had engraved in their DNA. This he often did to good effect to show how those in the thralls of this narrative always seemed to manage to fit every small bit of information about South Africa’s black population into a larger story about Africa’s supposed hopelessness and the alleged venality of Africans. He was less successful in pushing back against this narrative because he was far too thin skinned and defensive, so he often abused his insights in an attempt to discredit or deflect valid criticism of himself or his government.

That is, perhaps, one of the reasons why Mbeki is still so revered by many South Africans despite him wanting to cling to power and despite his almost tragic displays of self-hate and insecurity. Although he often correctly pointed out that many South Africans (who are mostly but not exclusively white) still discard good news stories about their country and the continent and grabbed onto the negative stories to fit them into their own grand narrative, he often went too far by using this insight to try and deflect attention from uncomfortable facts.

For example, there is no crime problem in South Africa, he famously said, suggesting that those who complain about crime did so because they were racists. Given the fact that poor and black South Africans are more severely affected by violent crime than most middle class white South Africans protected by private security firms and their wealth, this move went too far and discredited his analysis to some extent.

A second grand narrative, which I have often written about and relied upon — at least partially — is the one informed by a specific understanding of our apartheid past. This narrative focuses on the injustice of the apartheid past and the dehumanising effects of the system of racial oppression which denied black South Africans access to opportunities and robbed them of their dignity. According to this grand narrative we can understand much of what is happening in South Africa with reference to race and racism. It’s a narrative informed by the stories — at first whispered to avoid persecution by the apartheid state, now loudly proclaimed by even those who had no part in the struggle — of a heroic and noble anti-apartheid struggle led by the ANC against an evil apartheid regime.

This is the narrative that focuses on the past and turns away from the future. It is nurtured by a keen awareness of the past and ongoing injustice in our country. In its more extreme forms this narrative is fed by a (legitimate) grievance and the memory of past and ongoing racial prejudice and discrimination and evidence that there are pockets of fantastic wealth in the white community as well as evidence of the ease with which most white people seem to inhabit their skins and embrace their assumed privilege and superiority.

When City Press reports that Julius Malema has a secret trust fund into which corrupt businessmen pay large amounts of money in order to secure Malema’s assistance with tenders, when Afriforum then lays a charge of corruption with the police, when commentators then point out that these allegations — if true — constitute corruption and that if Malema does not sue the paper for defamation he is really admitting guilt, then those (like Miyeni) in the thralls of this second narrative often discard the possibility that Malema might be stealing from the poor. Instead they ask questions about the motives of those who exposed the alleged corruption and argue that it all forms part of a larger narrative to discredit black South Africans and to keep them under the white mans heel.

Those of us in South Africa (black and white) who think of ourselves as progressive — who believe in social justice and redress, in individual rights, in democracy, in freedom and equality, in trying to live ethical lives no matter how impossible that may seem — are perhaps trying to be postmodern in a modernist world. We want to punt many small micro-narratives and we are trying to get people to listen to and embrace the variety of stories about ourselves and our lives. We want to embrace complexity and nuance in a world that thrives on simplistic generalisations.

Like Jacob Dlamini did in his book Native Nostalgia, we want to tell stories that humanise our lives and particularise it without airbrushing away the past and ongoing injustice around us. We believe that every individual has his or her own unique story to tell and that we can learn something from listening and hearing that story. We also believe that every individual must be judged as an individual and not as a symbol or as a representative of a racial or language group. We believe that individuals have moral agency independent of their race or their other identity commitments.

We hear Judge President John Hlophe’s story and we do not see a black man being hounded by white people but a tragically flawed individual who should not have been appointed to the bench. We consider the story of Hansie Cronje and we do not see a tragic white hero who was tempted by the devil but rather a flawed and very human person who got caught by his own greed.

We view our country and its people in optimistic terms, but we also want to be hard-nosed about facts. We think that principles like honesty, truth and freedom are important. The problem is that our view is being drowned out by the other master narratives. The Eric Miyeni’s and the white racists – not morally equivalent but still two sides of a coin – hog the public debate and leave those of us who want to see the emergence of a more just South Africa – no matter whether this requires us to criticise or expose as corrupt either black or white leaders or demigods – high and dry, caught between two types of racial essentialism.

Does a respect for the human dignity of all and the possibility of moral agency (and the responsibility this entails) for every South African not require that we begin to question and expose and resist these master narratives whose proponents are leading us down a path of absolutes which rejects complexity and nuance in favour of easy but wrong answers? Maybe there is a radical middle after all and if there is, is it not time that those of us in the radical middle take back our country from the demagogues?

A vile attack on a successful black woman

Aug 1st, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
301 comments

As readers of this Blog know, I am not a great fan of the hate speech provisions in the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act (PEPUDA), as I think these provisions are used far too often by people who wish to shut up others with whom they do not agree. In South Africa, it has become fashionable to shout “hate speech” whenever somebody says anything one does not like.

That is why I have argued that the hate speech provisions in PEPUDA should be interpreted narrowly to try and bring it in line with the Constitution, whose hate speech provisions are far more narrowly tailored than the provisions in PEPUDA.

But when I read the opinion piece by one Eric Miyeni in The Sowetan today I immediately thought that this is the kind of hateful and deeply reactionary and sexist drivel which qualifies as hate speech. Mr Miyeni is of the race-is-destiny school of thought, the school of thought which thrives on racial generalisations and assumes that one has no individual moral agency. One IS one’s race. One has no life, no moral core, no complex emotions and beliefs that are unique to oneself — one is only one’s race.

In this world, if one points out that a person is corrupt or has said something stupid, and that person happens to be black, one is automatically a racist. In this world view black people are not really individuals at all, but merely representatives of their race. This is scary stuff as it mirrors the racism of some white people who see one corrupt black person and then make assumptions about black people as a group. Instead of rejecting racial generalisations, it embraces such generalisations.

I grew up with many such people. They enthusiastically supported apartheid and propagated the most vile and vitriolic racist beliefs about black people. For them all white (Afrikaners) were good and pure and right (except if they joined the UDF or the ANC, in which case they became communists and traitors), while all black South Africans were dirty, stupid and dangerous criminals. (Vile nonsense, I know, but beliefs that are still quite prevalent amongst some white people in South Africa – even today.) If one criticised the National Party these people also invoked the power of the mob to discipline you, just like Miyeni did in his piece. I see very little difference between the hatred and prejudice of Miyeni and the hatred and prejudice of those white racists.

Today Miyeni attacked the editor off City Press, Ferial Haffajee, in an attempt to divert attention from the very awkward questions being asked about Julius Malema and the sources of his money. Fair enough — we are all entitled to our political opinions as we live in a democracy now. But when, in doing so, one descends into the dangerous waters of racial generalisations, one probably does not deserve respect from anyone. Thus Miyeni states:

Who the devil is she anyway if not a black snake in the grass, deployed by white capital to sow discord among blacks? In the 80s she’d probably have had a burning tyre around her neck. We know where she comes from.And today we must believe that Haffajee’s utter hatred of ANC politicians is based on journalistic integrity. Quadruple crap. I am more inclined to think that people like Haffajjee, who edits City Press, are most likely to be the kind that wakes up in the morning, sees their black faces in the mirror only to feel a wave of self-hatred rising up to nauseate them.

Of course, the (male) reporters who wrote the stories that Miyeni is upset about are not attacked. Neither are the black, male editors and columnists who often criticise the ANC and members of the tenderpreneurial black elite. Why not? Because they are not women, one assumes. Maybe Miyeni is still getting used to living in a country where women are “allowed” to succeed and where they do not have to obey the men of this world and make tea for them?

Can it be that Miyeni is a modern patriarch who cannot stand that a strong black woman is successful? So what does he do? He attacks her and hints that she should be necklaced. If ever there was a case of hate speech this is it. Recall that hate speech occurs where it can reasonably be construed that the author had the intention to be harmful or hurtful to somebody based on, amongst others, their race and sex.

Well, the hatred for Haffajee as a black and female editor who has dared to publish in her paper critical comments about another black person, oozes out of this vile piece. No reasonable person would doubt that the author had the intention to hurt Haffajee as a black woman.

The “opinion piece”, which sounds like it was written after the author might have had one or two cups of Motata tea, then proceeds with a justification for corruption — as long as the corruption is perpetrated by black businessmen (no women in sight here) and by black politicians. I quote:

The only real source of business for us is our government. Are we now being told that if we make money through government contracts, our only hope, we cannot use that money to help fellow black people who are in politics, who need private funding to function? Where then should black politicians get financial support?

Miyeni must not have heard of the Prevention and Combatting of Corrupt Activities Act, passed by the democratic Parliament in 2004, which criminalises the kind of activity he defends. If one is a “businessman” (black or otherwise) and if one bankrolls a politician who may be seen to have influence over the granting of tenders, then one is more likely than not committing a crime.

Even if one thinks about this in naked racial terms — like Miyeni does — this piece of legislation makes sense, because if such corrupt activities were not prohibited, only those black businessmen (and the businesswomen who Miyeni treats as invisible) who paid the right politician would ever get a tender. If one did not have the right connections or if one did not have the money to pay into the right trust account, one would not be able to get any tenders from the government — even if one happened to be black AND a man (women, once again, not really featuring in the world of Eric Miyeni).

So, that is why Miyeni’s rant is not only hateful and vile, but also illogical — even on its own terms. It is not a principled criticism of business practices in South Africa. It is not a principled argument for Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment. It is not about opening up the business world (dominated for so long by white interests) to all those who have been denied this opportunity under apartheid.

It is, instead, no more than a defence of a small group of well-connected tenderpreneurs who have the money and the connections to bribe politicians in order to get tenders. What about all the other hard-working men (and women) who wish to obtain tenders from the state but do not have the money and the connections to pay the bribes that Miyeni seems to support?

Well, for Miyeni they and their kind can go to hell, it seems, whether they are black or not.

Time for litigation on education?

Jun 30th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
80 comments

A report that a countrywide assessment of grade 3 and grade 6 pupils has revealed shockingly low levels of literacy and numeracy amongst South African school children comes as no surprise. Given the fact that vast disparities remain between the conditions in most township and rural schools on the one hand and most suburban schools on the other and given the fact that many teachers remain underqualified and demotivated, the assessment merely confirmed what we already knew, namely that our education system is in deep crisis.

According to the report, the national average performance in grade 3 for literacy was 35%, and 28% for numeracy.  The Western Cape scored the highest with 43% for literacy and 36% for numeracy. Mpumalanga came last with pupils scoring an average 27% and 19% respectively.

Does this mean that our government is in breach of its constitutional duty – guaranteed in section 29(1)(a) of the Constitution – to provide everyone with at least basic education?

As I pointed out before, the Constitutional Court has not yet had the opportunity to provide a definitive interpretation of the scope and content of the obligations placed on the state by section 29(1)(a). However, in Governing Body of the Juma Musjid Primary School and Others v Essay and Others the Constitutional Court – in a judgment handed down earlier this year and authored by Justice Bess Nkabinde – discussed the content of this right in the context of an application to evict a public school conducted on private property.

Justice Nkabinde pointed out that the right to “a basic education” under section 29(1)(a) – unlike some of the other socio-economic rights – “is immediately realisable” as there is no internal limitation requiring that the right be “progressively realised” within “available resources” subject to “reasonable legislative measures”.  The right to a basic education in section 29(1)(a) may be limited only in terms of a law of general application which is “reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom”.

But what are the obligations of the state to ensure that it provides basic education immediately to everyone? Because this case dealt with the eviction of a school from private property and not with the question of whether the unequal provision of often substandard education breached section 29(1)(a), the Constitutional Court did not expressly answer this question. However, it did make the following pertinent remarks about the right to education:

The significance of education, in particular basic education for individual and societal development in our democratic dispensation in the light of the legacy of apartheid, cannot be overlooked. The inadequacy of schooling facilities, particularly for many blacks was entrenched by the formal institution of apartheid, after 1948, when segregation even in education and schools in South Africa was codified. Today, the lasting effects of the educational segregation of apartheid are discernible in the systemic problems of inadequate facilities and the discrepancy in the level of basic education for the majority of learners….

Indeed, basic education is an important socio-economic right directed, among other things, at promoting and developing a child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to his or her fullest potential. Basic education also provides a foundation for a child’s lifetime learning and work opportunities. To this end, access to school – an important component of the right to a basic education guaranteed to everyone by section 29(1)(a) of the Constitution – is a necessary condition for the achievement of this right.

As I read it, this passage reminds us that the provision of basic education to all is closely linked to the protection of the human dignity of every child. Children who are not provided with a basic minimum standard of education will probably never reach their full potential and will not have the opportunities provided to those children who were provided with access to basic education in better resourced and functioning schools.

This right – so it seems to me – becomes more potent when it is linked to the right to equality and non-discrimination (guaranteed in section 9 of the Constitution), which our courts have argued is also closely linked to the protection of the human dignity of all. Where the state provides shockingly unequal education to children and when this inequality is largely based on the race of the children, the state may well be failing to meet its commitments in terms of section 29(1), read with the obligations imposed by section 9 of the Bill of Rights.

Maybe the time has come to approach the Constitutional Court to challenge the failure of the state to take adequate measures that will begin to address the vastly unqequal education experience of children in South Africa.

As the Constitutional Court pointed out, the Minister of Basic Education and the various MEC’s of basic education have “a positive obligation in terms of the Constitution to ‘respect, protect, promote and fulfill the rights in the Bill of Rights’”.” Where it can be demonstrated that the Minister or MEC’s had not taken decisive steps to address the inequality in our education system and may have been at best indifferent to the problem and at worst may have made the situation worse, a breach of the Constitution would surely be found to have occurred.

In the Juma Masjid case, the Constitutional Court found that the MEC for basic education had not complied with these constitutional obligations as she had failed to pay the private landowners on which the school was situated  the arrear rentals and maintenance expenses incurred by those owners. In the affidavit before the High Court in this case, the MEC pointed out that she is acutely aware of the state’s constitutional obligations and undertook to pay all outstanding rentals and any amount payable in respect of expenditure incurred in maintaining the building, provided that certain legal requirements were met. As Justice Nkabinde remarked – perhaps in exasperation – “[t]hese undertakings came to naught”.

The Constitutional Court also pointed out that the authorities had a constitutional duty to place relevant evidence, including a plan setting out the details of how she was going to provide alternative education to the affected learners, before the Court, something she had failed to do. The Court endorsed the view expressed by the judge in the High Court judgment that:

It is unacceptable for the State to fail to put up relevant information and more importantly to take steps to comply with its constitutional obligations where a dispute pertains to the relevant State department’s performance of its constitutional mandate.  Much time and effort has been wasted due to, it seems, the [MEC’s] failure to deal decisively with the issue of the continued occupation by the school of the property on terms mutually acceptable . . . .  If the parties could not agree on mutually acceptable terms, then the [Department] should have taken steps a long time ago to make alternative arrangements, but to at least deal with the issue.  If that was done in accordance with the provisions of the Act with proper regard to the department’s constitutional mandate, then the need for the present application would probably never have arisen.

The Constitutional Court therefore found that the MEC was in breach of her constitutional duties.

In the light of the shocking results of the assessment report, the Minister and MEC’s surely have a duty to explain what steps are being taken to improve the situation in order to address the unconstitutional inequality in the provision of education to our children. More pertinently, the Minister and MEC’s have to explain what the department is doing to address the vast disparities in the standard of education of mostly white suburban kids and mostly black township and rural kids. What plans are in place and how are they being implemented?

Are steps being taken to lure better qualified and better paid teachers to these schools and if not why not? Are steps being taken to improve the qualifications and the performance of underqualified and underperforming teachers and if not why not? Why are there still 900 schools without toilets? Why do many children – usually in the poorest parts of the country – often do not have access to textbooks?

It would be revealing to see whether the assessment report indicates which schools and which areas have the best and the worst literacy and numeracy results? I would bet that the schools serving the poorest sections of the community, schools with the worst infrastructure and the worst paid teachers, and schools with governance problems and lack of leadership, would probably have produced the worst results. The question is what is going to be done to address this. Mere hand-wringing will no longer do. While it has much to answer for, merely passing the buck by blaming Sadtu, will also not suffice.

Surely we cannot continue with the present system where most white kids and those black kids whose parents can afford the school fees get a relatively decent education while the poorest kids get an education that is so inadequate that it would not meet the minimum requirements for the provision of basic education? Perhaps it is time for civil society to begin gathering evidence about these failures, to begin a campaign to mobilise parents and children in support of equal education and to put pressure on the government with threats of constitutional litigation and – as a last resort – actual constitutional litigation.

The NGO Equal Education seems to be doing good work in this regard, but it seems to me it needs to begin thinking of launching constitutional litigation as part of its mobilisation effort to ensure that all children in South Africa get access to at least basic education. Courts cannot fix our education system. But we have seen that threats of litigation and actual litigation can spur on the lethargic politicians and bureaucrats to do what they are constitutionally obliged to do.

I will gladly donate some of my time to help work on such a case. To the barricades and to the courts, I say!

On being white and feeling ashamed

Jun 27th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
156 comments

Should white people in South Africa feel ashamed about being white and about the fact that we benefited in the past because of our white skins and continue to benefit from our whiteness – even if we were born after the end of apartheid? Should white South Africans do more than acknowledge the wrongs of the past and its lingering effects and withdraw from public debate to signal our humility and shame?

In a provocative article published on Saturday in Die Burger Eusebius McKaiser, with reference to the academic work of philosopher Samantha Vice, engages with these complicated and challenging issues.

McKaiser argues – quite correctly, it seems to me – that the dominance of whiteness as an idea and as a social reality embodied with immense power (and the exploitation that is associated with this whiteness) is not something that we can claim to be past us. We are not colour blind in the new South Africa, nor can any of us be colour blind – even if we tried or even if we claimed never to see a person’s race. We still live our race and benefit from it – especially if we are white.  As McKaiser states:

One of Samantha [Vice's] significant observations is that white South Africans have unknowingly become used to an uncritical way of living in their white skins; which means they cannot even acknowledge that being white is still equated with social capital. Just like a sexist black man or a homophobic white woman may never accept that they benefited from patriarchy or heteronormativity, few white people make the effort to acknowledge that certain benefits are still wrapped up in being white. Some would even have the audacity to claim that they are the victims, the new “blacks”, of South Africa.

They will argue that the system has changed because St John’s College in Houghton now has a black head boy, new BMW’s mostly belong to black professionals and these days some people are even the victims of anti-white racism. But when the cold hard facts around poverty, inequality and unemployment are looked at from the vantage point of race, this emphasises Samantha’s honest opinion: whiteness still represents unfair advantage in the post apartheid South Africa. Whiteness is still the social norm, is still in fashion.

For McKaiser and for Samantha Vice an appropriate way for white people to deal with this reality of past and ongoing white dominance and exploitation is to feel ashamed. However, McKaiser disagrees with Vice about her contention that white people should therefore withdraw from the public space. He contends that it is the responsibility of everyone to engage as equals in the public debate. Surely, he argues, black people do not need to be protected from the opinions of white people?

Personally, while I fully endorse the analysis by the two authors about the dominance of whiteness and the ongoing benefits and privileges bestowed on all of us who happen to be white because we are white, I find the language of “shame” highly problematic.

The term “shame” – like the term “guilt” – sounds rather biblical in nature. One feels guilty and ashamed if one has sinned in the eyes of God. One then asks for forgiveness and is forgiven by God but one avoids repeating the sin because one feels ashamed at what one has done. Shame turns us into passive bystanders in our own lives and to some extent, absolve us from broader responsibility for our actions and for who we are and how we have lived and continue to live in this world and in this country of ours. 

Shame does not allow us to take responsibility for our actions in a concrete manner and to take action to deal with the injustices we find all around us. Instead, shame paralyses us and delivers us into the hands of God or some such deity who might, in time, help us to carry our burden of shame just like Jesus supposedly carried our sins for us on the cross. 

The notion of shame, for me, also runs the risk of being seen as self-indulgent and narcissistic. Shame is about focusing on the self – not on the suffering of others or the injustices which created the shame in the first place. By advocating that white South Africans should all feel ashamed, the authors might be encouraging whites obsessively to focus on themselves and their personal feelings, which are then cast as being at the centre of their universe. This, ironically, is exactly what the authors identify as the problem with whiteness – this obsessive belief that one is the centre of the world and that how one feels and what one does is what is important in the world.

Rather, I would argue in favour of the language of responsibility and reparation. All of us who are privileged in our different ways (as whites, as heterosexuals, as men, as the wealthy) should acknowledge our – sometimes admittedly, relative – privilege and should reflect critically (and with a degree of humility that does not slide into blubbering obsequiousness) on who we are and how we can take responsibility for our actions in a more ethically relevant and practically meaningful manner. 

Far more than advocating that all white people should feel ashamed, I would advocate that those of us who are white South Africans should ask the following kinds of questions: How do we deal with our whiteness and the racism associated with it; our heterosexuality and the homophobia associated with it; our maleness and the sexism associated with it? Do we live meaningful lives in which we demonstrate – through words and deeds – that we are aware of our own privileged position and do we act in ways that can be seen to help to address the effects of past and ongoing injustice in which we might be directly or indirectly implicated?

If we managed to live the kind of lives mentioned in the previous paragraph (something that is admittedly almost impossible to do 24 hours a day), it will prevent us from turning into passive but narcissistic wallowers in guilt who, in order to feel virtuously ashamed, sit in our little corners, oblivious to the everyday needs of our fellow South Africans, whose lives we might have touched if only we had overcome our shame and guilt and actually did something.

Living such lives (or at least knowing that it would be good to try) would ensure that we actually live lives of dignity as promised by our Constitution. It might allow us to do something to make our world (however large or small we wish to define it) a better and more just place – something that shame and guilt can never do.

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