White men “specifically” are the
worst kind of regressive lawyers to inhabit our judiciary. Black people, on the
other hand - men and women - are stunningly progressive and represent a calibre
of humanity which it will be hard-pressed to find anywhere in our part of the
planet.
This reading of Cosatu general
secretary Zwelinzima Vavi’s comments may appear extreme, but it is apposite as
a reflection of his gross racist stereotyping.
Speaking at a National
Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel) function in Mthatha recently, Vavi
said that more opportunities must be created for black legal practitioners,
especially women, to enter all sections of the legal profession.
Nothing wrong with that; nor
with his assertion that “in addition to addressing representivity in terms of
race and gender, the judiciary as a whole should reflect a working class bias
that is pro-poor and pro-development”.
But Vavi goes further in urging
Nadel to ensure that transformation is accelerated “more specifically”, so that
“eventually the bench of every court in the country is packed with progressive
lawyers”.
If we were mistaken to
understand from his comments that transformation to ensure progressive legal
appointments equates to the appointment of only black lawyers, Vavi establishes
the nexus between race and mindset very clearly when he tells Nadel that law
graduates must increasingly reflect the “demographics and progressive mindsets
necessary to accelerate transformation”.
When did our proudly non-racial
trade union movement descend to such arrant and errant racial stereotyping?
This is not an argument in
support of reactionary, recalcitrant racists, or an ignoring of how race still
badly distorts every aspect of our society. It is, of course, entirely
plausible that racists on the fringes of our society will benefit from a
discourse which does not run to a crass characterisation of each other on the
basis of our race. That is an outcome that principled progressives will always
face. (In another debate, an argument in favour of free speech will always
benefit those who may use it to spout hate speech.)
But the fact that many whites
have sought refuge in a racialised narrative of their alleged oppression at the
hands of an ANC-led government (epitomised as much by Tony Leon’s former
fight-back campaign as by Solidarity’s misguided legal action in respect of
“Dibula ibhunu”) does not in the least mitigate the move away from a non-racial
paradigm.
The notion that, because one is
white, one is forever doomed to a pre-determined atavist consciousness, or
that, being black, one is blessed by God or the ancestors with a progressive
disposition, belongs on the same scrapheap as apartheid’s determination that
blacks must be hewers of wood and drawers of water.
It is astounding that Vavi
offers no reflection on how class or race may impact on the progressiveness or
otherwise of potential jurists. Notwithstanding that humans have displayed a
clear ability to act against their class - and an equal skill in spurning their
race.
Within the federation that Vavi
leads and its historical antecedents have been men and women who have literally
contributed their lives to progress worker, feminist, poor agendas. And they
were whites born into the middle class.
In our society also, however,
are those who are misogynist, ethno-centric tyrants. And they are black and
born into the working class.
Perhaps in drawing the line
below white judges, Vavi is merely accepting that their material or class
position in society – to revert to Marxist language – dictates their class
consciousness or their “political, juridical and other ideological” notions (as
Engels wrote to Frans Meiring in July 1883)*.
However, in this regard, black
lawyers who may ascend to the bench are no different from white lawyers. Their
“juridical” notions would thus be formed and informed by their class positions
and not their race. Of course, the question must be asked whether it is the
class position they were born into or the class position they adopted. To be
sure, experience shows that professionals from a working class background waste
little time in transcending their class position into the middle classes.
There is no direct correlation
between race and one’s occupation of the working class, between race and an
ability to lead a country or a trade union federation, or even between race and
being a progressive legal apologist. Of course, race influences all of these
roles, and nowhere is this more starkly depicted than in our racialised,
democratic capitalist South
Africa
At best for Vavi, however, his
comments point to the complexity inherent in an individual’s class identity,
rather than a simple relation to the means of production or a racial tag.
If Vavi is arguing for a renewed
effort to ensure that black people in South Africa are given a
better-than-equal shot at breaking into roles from which they have been
historically excluded - and where their participation still does not come close
to mimicking the demographics of our country – I make common cause with him.
However, if his position is a crass dogma of white is bad and black (read
African, although Vavi is not as regressive to totally exclude coloureds and
Indians) is good, we are on opposite sides of a fight which ultimately must
affirm whether or not we can call ourselves a non-racial democracy where all
have a place and a role and a voice.
* quoted in Hobsbawn 2011
