If I called you a kaffir or a honkie, a hotnot or a coolie or any one of scores of racist names, would you hold it against me?
You should. At least that's what the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act is intended to censure.
What would you think if I called myself that? Probably that my parents never taught me respect for self or that the chips on my shoulders are really messing with my social posture.
Given our legislation, and some degree of social constraint, only the most bolshie of un-reconstructed racists among us would go around spouting racist epithets.
But, we make a mistake to think that the un-reconstructed racists among us are in a minority and that you and I stand outside of their purview. On the contrary, racism cuts vast swathes across every aspect of our communities, whether born out of ignorance, myth, victimhood, ethnocentrism, economic imperative, nationalism, historical precedent, xenophobia or prejudice towards "the other" (people who are different to us).
It takes very little for any one of us in this country - and especially for those of our countrymen who choose to sit thousands of kilometres away and engage in the issues via internet news and social networking sites - to get hot under the collar and begin to call each other the worst racist names imaginable.
The ANC has become a spectacular and embarrassing failure on a host of fronts since it became the governing party. But that does not excuse the fact that much of the criticism of government in some forums drips with unadulterated racist venom.
Nor does it mean that an alternative government by its nature must be non-African, as supporters of the DA-led Western Cape imply, even when senior DA leaders try their darndest to shoot them down.
Many of those who have climbed on the bandwagon of the current debate around race defend a position from inside a racial or cultural laager. And, post Manyi, coloured leaders - or should I say, leaders who define themselves as coloured - have failed miserably in providing the necessary leadership out of this laager mentality.
It also doesn't help when Africans try to occupy a moral high ground by suggesting - as Africanist academic Kwandi Kondlo did in the Robert Sobukwe Memorial Lecture at Fort Hare last week - that it is impossible for "blacks" to be racist because they are not the dominant economic group in our society.
Notwithstanding some hectic exchanges recently, we are only just scratching the surface of our racialised make-up. Race is anything but a touchy-feely issue and the resolution of racialised problems in our society will require difficult engagement.
But, until you and I begin to honestly declare where we stand on this issue of race and how we feel about our very material, very racialised existence in relation to each other, we cannot move forward even when we pretend that we have moved on.
As irritating as this hoo-hah on race may be, it will be repeated whenever our baser instincts trump our good intentions - unless we talk honestly - and civilly - about the fact that:
- You think that my cultural practices are disgusting and offensive to your sense of what is normal or modern or "cultured";
- I am hurting because I lost my investment because I didn't get the tender because I have the wrong racial classification in terms of empowerment legislation;
- You are angry because 17 years after winning the right to vote, you stay in a site-and-service pondokkie with access to few if any municipal services; none of your three kids has regular, sustained work; and your five grandchildren all subsist from your State pension;
- You have never been allowed to talk about the intense hatred you feel towards "them" because their government forcibly removed your family from what they called a slum (your family called it home for almost 50 years); a few weeks later your father died of the stress caused by the move to the middle of nowhere and a short while later your mother died of a broken heart;
- You wonder how it can be that you gave up the country to "them" yet 17 years later you are still being blamed for "their" incompetence;
- I can never conceive of my little girl or boy dating, let alone marrying, one of "them" because "they" really don't measure up to the standards of my family.
- You really think that you are much better than any of us, God's gift really to this society.
If race is a social construct - as natural scientists have proven and as social scientists keep reminding us - then we need to be working damn hard to overcome the social forces that demonise our society.
Recently, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was asked for his comment on the race spat between Jimmy Manyi and Trevor Manuel.
I am coloured, said Tutu. And he referred to his gnome, the formal scientific link in his genetic makeup to the San people.
But there was an existential component to what Tutu was saying. He was staking himself to the underclass (in this particular debate). It reflected Steve Biko, among others, who wrote on blackness and being black. Biko called it a state of mind. Tutu, I suggest, would call it a "state of heart".
It mimics John F Kennedy who, as Cold War animosity peaked, declared on his trip to the wall that divided East and West Berlin in 1963: "I am a Berliner"?
And it is echoed in the Egyptian youths who stated at the height of opposition to Hosni Mubarak's despotic rule: "We are all Khaled Said" in memory of the martyr savaged by Mubarak's security police.
It debunks the "single stereotypical lens" that Harvard theologian Peter Gomes, who died last month, referred to when he chose to declare his homosexuality in 1996 during a period of sustained gay-bashing on the New England campus.
It's about saying, whether we are black or white: I am you. I want to put myself in your shoes, in your footsteps. I want to understand and experience and know what it is to be you, so that when you hurt, I hurt, when you are overjoyed, I am full of joy.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Was Manuel right that Manyi was on a racist rant?
I hold no truck with Jimmy Manyi. Since he appeared on the national scene a couple of years ago to spout his inflammatory nonsense, I felt that it would be a matter of time before he was hoisted by his own petard. And so there may be some justice in the latest outcry about his comments on issues of race.
But, Trevor Manuel, on the other hand, is an opportunist. He chooses his battles carefully, with an eye on his own strengths, the relative weakness of his opponent, and the extent to which he can garner votes on behalf of the ruling party. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but it does mean that the outpouring of praise for Manuel for his “principled” outburst at Manyi’s perceived racism must be tempered.
Check back on the sledgehammer that Manuel took to Mo Shaik when the latter dared to suggest that Manuel was an “okay Joe” to have in President Jacob Zuma’s cabinet. It was political “thanks but no thanks” at its best, replete with mock respect, calling to mind Brutus’ shafting of Marc Anthony which masqueraded as a eulogy to Caesar.
Manuel clearly has taken a calculated view on Manyi's strength within the upper reaches of the ANC. He figures that such strength will dissipate when the party weighs the significance of votes in the May local government elections.
Because, despite his vehemence that he is a non-racialist, Manuel cannot deny that the coloured constituency in the Western Cape is critical to the ANC’s election campaign here and that he – apartheid-carrying epithet or not - is among a handful of party leaders regarded as capable of connecting with this constituency following years of dis-organisation. And it won’t do the ANC any harm that he will pull a few white votes too. In this scenario, Manyi is hopelessly dispensable to Luthuli House.
A low point in Manuel’s principled stand on issues was his pithy sound bite two years ago that criticising the Dalai Lama was akin to “trying to shoot Bambi”. It wasn’t so much that Manuel was questioning the democratic credentials of an overlord of a fierce theocracy-in-exile but that he was defending Pretoria’s anti-democratic action in declining a visa to the Tibetan leader apparently at the behest of the Chinese government.
There was also Manuel’s sarcastic retort when he was fingered for splashing out on a fancy government car.
There is no doubt that the minister was seriously needled by aspects of Jimmy Manyi's utterances – including that Manyi did not really apologise for having said or done something wrong but apologised that some people “may have been” offended.
But why should Manyi apologise? I did not hear Manyi refer to coloured people in a derogatory manner as “things” or anything else. And it is pure opportunism to suggest this.
I heard him talk to government policy on affirmative action as it stands and currently proposed amendments. As the most senior government bureaucrat tasked with implementing labour policy, he was acting perfectly within his mandate to talk about local, provincial and national demographics as they relate to affirmative action.
That we are commodities – every one of us who attempts to sell our labour on a national and international market – is an unfortunate outcome of an industrialised, and globalising economy, even in a South Africa desperately struggling to overcome its racialised past.
Historical fiat – the Western Cape was a “coloured preference area” under the apartheid government – and a perceived unwelcoming environment contribute to a labour market that is skewed in favour of coloured employees at certain levels, at the expense of Africans. Employers argue that there simply are not enough African people in the province or willing to relocate from elsewhere, to fill jobs which should go to African candidates in terms of employment equity legislation.
If companies and government in the Western Cape are forced to apply a “national demographic” where the labour force must mimic the race make-up of the country’s population, it will mean that only African candidates for jobs will be employed for years to come. And those coloureds who seek work here will have to look elsewhere – especially in areas where they can maximise their competitive (for purposes of employment equity provisions) racial advantage.
If the Western Cape accepts “local or provincial demographics”, then far more coloureds could be accommodated in the active labour market although my impression is that the percentage of African employees in this province’s economy will still be much too low.
Manuel is right when he refers to the attempts to push back the line on what constitutes “black” or ‘African” in a South African context. The law defines black as including African, coloured and Indian. That is the only definition which is relevant under the constitution, regardless of what anyone, including racists, anti-race classification proponents and even many employers may say.
But if Manuel disagreed with the general policy on employment equity or the shifts which the current amendments envisage, he should have declared them ages ago, certainly at the time that, as a senior ANC leader, he was first briefed on them. Manyi has not said anything which is out of sync with current law.
The issue of whether or not Manyi was speaking as DG or as Black Management Forum head is a matter of governance which, again, Manuel - as a senior Cabinet minister and ANC official - should have been alert to and expressed a view on at the time.
The debate around affirmative action remains a critical one in which all South Africans must participate. At times it will cover sensitive terrain – like how we deal with an “over-concentration” of a particular race group in one part of the country - which will make many of us, including Manuel, uncomfortable.
Indeed, a debate on issues of race must be an ongoing project in our country. But while that debate might not eschew the ideal of a rainbow nation, it must happen on the basis of intellectual honesty, mutual respect and the recognition of each other’s right not only to be part of the debate but integrally part of this country.
It will require that we push aside political opportunism, our intuition to take sledgehammers to each other, and our predilection to engage emotively on substantive issues.
But, Trevor Manuel, on the other hand, is an opportunist. He chooses his battles carefully, with an eye on his own strengths, the relative weakness of his opponent, and the extent to which he can garner votes on behalf of the ruling party. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but it does mean that the outpouring of praise for Manuel for his “principled” outburst at Manyi’s perceived racism must be tempered.
Check back on the sledgehammer that Manuel took to Mo Shaik when the latter dared to suggest that Manuel was an “okay Joe” to have in President Jacob Zuma’s cabinet. It was political “thanks but no thanks” at its best, replete with mock respect, calling to mind Brutus’ shafting of Marc Anthony which masqueraded as a eulogy to Caesar.
Manuel clearly has taken a calculated view on Manyi's strength within the upper reaches of the ANC. He figures that such strength will dissipate when the party weighs the significance of votes in the May local government elections.
Because, despite his vehemence that he is a non-racialist, Manuel cannot deny that the coloured constituency in the Western Cape is critical to the ANC’s election campaign here and that he – apartheid-carrying epithet or not - is among a handful of party leaders regarded as capable of connecting with this constituency following years of dis-organisation. And it won’t do the ANC any harm that he will pull a few white votes too. In this scenario, Manyi is hopelessly dispensable to Luthuli House.
A low point in Manuel’s principled stand on issues was his pithy sound bite two years ago that criticising the Dalai Lama was akin to “trying to shoot Bambi”. It wasn’t so much that Manuel was questioning the democratic credentials of an overlord of a fierce theocracy-in-exile but that he was defending Pretoria’s anti-democratic action in declining a visa to the Tibetan leader apparently at the behest of the Chinese government.
There was also Manuel’s sarcastic retort when he was fingered for splashing out on a fancy government car.
There is no doubt that the minister was seriously needled by aspects of Jimmy Manyi's utterances – including that Manyi did not really apologise for having said or done something wrong but apologised that some people “may have been” offended.
But why should Manyi apologise? I did not hear Manyi refer to coloured people in a derogatory manner as “things” or anything else. And it is pure opportunism to suggest this.
I heard him talk to government policy on affirmative action as it stands and currently proposed amendments. As the most senior government bureaucrat tasked with implementing labour policy, he was acting perfectly within his mandate to talk about local, provincial and national demographics as they relate to affirmative action.
That we are commodities – every one of us who attempts to sell our labour on a national and international market – is an unfortunate outcome of an industrialised, and globalising economy, even in a South Africa desperately struggling to overcome its racialised past.
Historical fiat – the Western Cape was a “coloured preference area” under the apartheid government – and a perceived unwelcoming environment contribute to a labour market that is skewed in favour of coloured employees at certain levels, at the expense of Africans. Employers argue that there simply are not enough African people in the province or willing to relocate from elsewhere, to fill jobs which should go to African candidates in terms of employment equity legislation.
If companies and government in the Western Cape are forced to apply a “national demographic” where the labour force must mimic the race make-up of the country’s population, it will mean that only African candidates for jobs will be employed for years to come. And those coloureds who seek work here will have to look elsewhere – especially in areas where they can maximise their competitive (for purposes of employment equity provisions) racial advantage.
If the Western Cape accepts “local or provincial demographics”, then far more coloureds could be accommodated in the active labour market although my impression is that the percentage of African employees in this province’s economy will still be much too low.
Manuel is right when he refers to the attempts to push back the line on what constitutes “black” or ‘African” in a South African context. The law defines black as including African, coloured and Indian. That is the only definition which is relevant under the constitution, regardless of what anyone, including racists, anti-race classification proponents and even many employers may say.
But if Manuel disagreed with the general policy on employment equity or the shifts which the current amendments envisage, he should have declared them ages ago, certainly at the time that, as a senior ANC leader, he was first briefed on them. Manyi has not said anything which is out of sync with current law.
The issue of whether or not Manyi was speaking as DG or as Black Management Forum head is a matter of governance which, again, Manuel - as a senior Cabinet minister and ANC official - should have been alert to and expressed a view on at the time.
The debate around affirmative action remains a critical one in which all South Africans must participate. At times it will cover sensitive terrain – like how we deal with an “over-concentration” of a particular race group in one part of the country - which will make many of us, including Manuel, uncomfortable.
Indeed, a debate on issues of race must be an ongoing project in our country. But while that debate might not eschew the ideal of a rainbow nation, it must happen on the basis of intellectual honesty, mutual respect and the recognition of each other’s right not only to be part of the debate but integrally part of this country.
It will require that we push aside political opportunism, our intuition to take sledgehammers to each other, and our predilection to engage emotively on substantive issues.
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