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This week South Africa experienced two naturally unrelated events that,out of pure coincidence, became part of the same debate, that of the country’s history of racialised history as well as its highly contested future.
The two events, and a third that preceded them, were the pre-sentencing hearing of EFF Leader Julius Malema in Gukompo ( formerly East London) in the Eastern a Cape and the appointment by President Cyril Ramaphosa, of Roelf Meyer as South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States of America, probably the most important diplomatic posting for South Africa. While the two are completely unrelated, their timing made them part of the same debate.
Ahead of Malema’s appearance, the instigator of his misery, Afriforum, ran a social media campaign “ die pope saal dans”, Afrikaans for the chickens have come home to roost. The celebratory campaign was not surprising at all as the Afrikaans presssure going has been pursuing Malema from day as the leader of the ANC Youth League.
At the center of Afriforum’s fight with Malema is a push to pretend that apartheid and colonialism never happened, that the black majority is poor because their forefathers never worked hard enough to build generational wealth and that the privilege that the white minority continues to enjoy was obtained on merit. This did not just rely on targeting Malema who’s party is not even the second biggest in the country but has also involved distortions as well as outright attacks on black history, black political heritage and without a doubt black aspirations.
The second event, Meyer’s appointment, occurred on the eve of Malema’s court appearance which led to the two becoming part of heated and racialialised debate with leading white South African figures reviving the swaart gevaar agenda while blacks condemned both Malema’s prosecution and the president’s choice. Meyer, black critics argue, was chosen to please the clearly racist Donald Trump administration, that he’s likely to offer the abandoning of South Africa’s transformation agenda. Is this what the new Ambassador is likely to do, probably, but diplomacy by its very nature is complex and it is highly improbable that the President made the decision driven by simplistic notions. While Meyer can still turn out to be the best diplomat South Africa has ever had, what they remembered this week was mostly his legacy as a leader of the erstwhile National Party and an enforcer of apartheid.
Meyer has had several redeeming moments such as his leading roles in peace talks between the NP and the ANC as well as in the development of the country’s current constitution. This ( his participation ) endeared him with some black South Africans but certainly not all of them and certainly not a majority of them. What’s coming out clearly though is that while still amenable to the notion of reconciliation, black South Africans are less tolerant of racism now than they were when the CODESA talks were held, that they no longer accept what they are told by a largely right-leaning media as the gospel truth and this is how a crucial diplomatic posting found itself in the same sentences in opinion pieces with the possible sentencing of a politician.
This brings into question, the honesty, or lack thereof of our reconciliation project. Are black aspirations being frustrated to alay white fears?
Has white South Africans been an honest player post 1994? Are black South Africans unreasonable to refuse to abandon their apartheid heritage which includes singing songs that whites say they are offended or threatened by? Is it not too early to even start labeling redress policies as “race based laws”?
The answers to the above questions may vary depending on which side of the discourse one stands but one thing that is coming out clearly is that a fresh debate on race relations, the economy and its racial features, as well as the future of the country is needed. Could this debate be solved at the ballot? This is a conversation that South Africans must have as a matter of urgency. The outcome of the Malema case and Meyer’s performance in Washington DC are neither here nor there, what is worth noting and acting upon is the realities of inequality and division that these two events exposed which we may have tried to conceal.
The third event which preceded the two was the recent Federal Congress of the Democratic Alliance which served as a reminder to many South Africans, blacks in particular, of what and who the party represents. It would be unfair to force the DA for not electing enough black leaders or women into positions of leadership and or not allowing enough blacks to be voting delegates at its congresses. The DA remains a private organisation with a right to determine its elective procedures even if they maintain apartheid power arrangements and none of us can change that. However the conversation about its composition of its leadership serves as a reminder of the not so comfortable discussion we need to have as a nation as does Roel Meyer’s appointment and Malema’s prosecution.
Most importantly though, these events revealed how fresh the wounds inflicted by colonialism and later apartheid are still.
