The Truth Hurts

If you do not like to hear the truth or if you cannot take positive criticism, please do not read any further. For the past two weeks I have restrained myself from commenting on the current happenings in South Africa but it reached a point where I could not keep quiet anymore after I read the DA commentary on Zille’s ‘edu-refugee’ tweet. In South Africa the truth might sound racist but it is not. So here is my last warning if you do not like to hear the truth with regards to the current situation of the majority of South Africans, PLEASE DO NOT read any further.

By now most of you of know the tweet of Zille which referred to black pupils from the Eastern Cape as ‘edu-refugees’ and you must have heard of the ‘racial wars’ in Grabouw in the Western Cape. Whilst the DA and ANC is busy fighting over the definition of ‘refugee’ the real issue is overlooked.

My last two posts addressed the issue of intellectual decolonization and the oppressed mind-set of ‘liberated’ South Africans. What is currently happening is a great example of this ‘mental enslavement’ of majority of South Africans.

Let me contextualised Zille’s tweet. Her tweet was in response to the ‘racial wars’ in Grabouw. There was a clash between the ‘black’ and the ‘coloured’ communities over an overcrowded school. The one community wanted to burn the school down whilst the other did not want to burn it down. The bottom-line is both communities were wrong because before resorting to violence as the answer there are other ways of dealing with the situation. Both parties want the best education for their children and that was the issue that was supposed to be discussed and not fighting one another over the method of dealing with the situation.

The sad part is two previously disadvantage groups are fighting over a service that they were denied during apartheid; a historical fact that both Zille and her cabal conveniently overlooked. This situation also brought another issue to the fore; ‘white’ people do not want to take responsibility for the mess that was created during apartheid. They were the beneficiaries during apartheid and still is today. What most people do not understand about apartheid is that it was an ideology that was created to make ‘white’ people that sole beneficiary of whatever economic output.

For any ideology to be effective it needs to institutionalise physically and mentally. What happened in 1994 is a half done liberation process. The ANC was unable to remove all of the institutional features of the apartheid ideology and that is why the majority of South Africans are “held captive within the economic and cultural structures of … [apartheid]” (Dr Chinweizu, 2007)). What happened in 1994 according to Dr Chinweizu is the following: “On each country’s ‘independence day’, it simply moved from being ruled and exploited for imperialism by white expatriate colonialists to being ruled and exploited for imperialism by black comprador colonialists.” What I am trying to show is that the ANC was unable to remove all of the structures apartheid.

The solution in Grabouw was simple, instead of looking towards the state for a solution for the overcrowded school in Grabouw, the farmers of the area was supposed to take the responsibility of building a bigger school for the children of their farm workers. Remember they introduced ‘Bantu education’ and benefitted years from the cheap labour from the Eastern Cape, so it is now their responsibility to give back what they got from disadvantaging others.

The second issue at hand is the DAs subtle racism. It is sad that they deny it and is completely unaware of it. Unfortunately for them, Helen Zille this time around made a silly mistake by calling ‘black’ pupils from the Eastern Cape ‘edu-refugees’. At a subconscious level she still sees people who come from the Eastern Cape as ‘refugees’ from the Transkei ‘homeland’. We all know that during apartheid ‘black’ people needed a pass to enter the Western Cape. Maybe she see ‘black’ pupils from the Eastern Cape attending schools in the Western Cape carrying passes and this might explain why she called them ‘refugees’.

While I am on the issue of the Eastern Cape, Zille must remember that it was her fore-fathers that supported an apartheid South Africa. Many English ‘white’ South Africans do not want to take responsibility for apartheid but they easily forget that before apartheid was officially introduced by the National Party in 1948 the English laid the foundation for apartheid by forming the Union of South Africa without ‘black’ people.

Here is another fact that Zille conveniently forget, in the 1980s the Western Cape was declared as a Coloured Labour Preferential Area. The Coloured Labour Preferential Policy was created to attract cheap labour from the ‘homelands’ to cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town. When the Western Cape was declared such an area and many South Africans from Transkei came to the Western Cape in search for work. This allowed farmers to access cheap seasonally labour.

If we consider all of this why is it so difficult for Zille to apologise and accept that she offended the majority of South Africans? I am also suggesting that Zille who obvious speak from a privilege background to understand that she cannot utter racial condescending statement and then go about blaming the ANC where she and her fore-fathers was the cause of it all. It is time for the beneficiaries of apartheid to take responsibility for the mess of apartheid, and not only by apologizing and say that “we were wrong” but through sharing some of the resources they gained through disadvantaging ‘blacks’ during apartheid.

26 March 2012