Sunday, May 27, 2012

Let's share the pains of our past

It is a painful reality that, just beneath the skin, so many of our compatriots exhibit such naked racism when they're scratched even a bit lightly. One of the reasons for this, I believe, is that we have not allowed each other the space to share the pain we carry of our past.

Following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process, we dusted ourselves off and got on with practical things in the country, rather than dealing with “soft” issues of how apartheid made us feel - black and white. These many issues remain a challenge, brought into sharp relief by The Spear.

Most of us South Africans have been keen in recent weeks to exercise our right to freedom of expression, saying just exactly what we feel about everything that disturbs us about our country, whether it reflects ethnocentrism, patriarchy, paternalism, sexism, racism. And generally, it’s good that this discussion continues. But, perhaps occasionally, we should mind our words and avoid the devastation that some of our expressions – whether in verbal, physical or painted form – cause.

We have also been keen to conflate things, such as the dignity of Jacob Zuma the person and the office of the president, or whether calling a member of a political party or of a race category a predator of any kind means that we regard all members of that party or race as predators.We have ignored context – both the context of seeing an individual’s dangling penis against that person’s self-expression of his sexuality, as well as the context of how the naked black form, especially the naked black penis, has been a part of our racist colonial past.

We have been keener still in the latest round of our race discourse to limit the extent to which we allow one another to say things about the other. It's clear that we have developed the habit of shutting each other down because of a mistaken idea that if we are black we cannot have anything meaningful to contribute towards an understanding of being white, and vice versa. And when we have the courage to speak, those ranged against us intuitively agree that our act of speaking has been inherently racist. Some people believe the right to speak on a subject – whether freedom of speech, African tradition or the pain of our past and present - belongs only to them.

If there was a failing in the TRC hearings, it was that not all stories could realistically be told. But maybe we should have devoted time and resources to hearing the stories of disenfranchisement, of removals of ordinary people and the forced sales of their properties, of dislocation, of job preferences and direct or covert abuse in the workplace, stories of being undressed both physically and metaphorically, of being allowed only to occupy certain spaces in the parks and suburbs as well as in the social intercourse, of being shut up and shut out.

It seems to me that the biggest challenge is our inability to accept one another’s humanity, when we don’t know each other’s story and even when we do.

I believe that it is time to return to a TRC style method of talking.South Africa is ripe for a movement of ordinary people who will commit to each other, who will begin to see beyond particular racial identities, who will get to know and understand and enjoy each other in the fullness of all the identities we carry and not just the race signifier, who will work together to lay a platform for a new and renewed national project to build this country for all our children.

I am certainly not arguing for a non-racial veneer which masks the deep racial make-up of our society. The politics and the economics of race – reflected inter alia in ownership of wealth and access to opportunity to create it - are very real and very painful throughout our country.But we do need to begin to hear each other’s stories, both the traumatic historical experiences of overt and legal racism, and the stories of exclusion today, despite a constitution which is the envy of the world.

And then, instead of merely carping about our problems, we may realise our role in putting forward real solutions which recognize the humanity of all of us, and our rights and responsibilities in terms of the Constitution.

That our State fails us in myriad ways is something we all can agree on to a greater or lesser extent. And, while we may have partisan agendas in respect of some issues and argue them vigorously, on others we surely can agree that, regardless of our race, our gender, our age, our language, or any other way we may choose to define ourselves, we share a common purpose in bettering our society.

Until we do accept our shared humanity, we cannot comprehend the possibility of an “average” South African, imbibed with a set of values and aspirations shared by the vast majority of us, who abhors crime, who desires to live in peace with all people, but who will take up arms to safeguard kin and country, who wishes to protect all our children, who will take care of the downtrodden and marginalized, who will not let the sun set on an injustice.

Our political leaders across the spectrum have shown themselves patently incapable of galvanising our country towards that non-racial ideal, taking forward the forging of a common South African identity. And so perhaps it is time for civil society and especially for faith communities to take the leading role in moving our society forward. Instead of merely continuing to talk about what is wrong with our country, we must begin the real work of changing things in ways big and small, but primarily in small ways, because that’s where you and I can make a difference in each other’s lives.

Desmond Tutu last year very effectively dealt with the race-infused standoff between Trevor Manuel and Jimmy Manyi. I am coloured, said Tutu, referring to his gnome, the formal scientific link to the San. Typically, there was a response about Tutu’s dishonesty in trying to appropriate a San identity to which he is not entitled.

But there is an existential component to what Tutu said. It continued the thoughts of Steve Biko, who wrote on blackness and being black as a state of mind, a political construct. It’s about saying, 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.

** First published in Weekend Argus 27.05.2012