Afrikaans and Racial Privilege

Afrikaans is not under threat. We must not be misled by the media and its partners. Afrikaans and English in our universities, schools, and even our workplaces is a historical political reality that is still present today.  

During apartheid and colonialism a concerted effort was made to eradicate and marginalise the indigenous languages. [The argument that Afrikaans is an indigenous language is a fallacy. It is a creole language.] This was an effort civilize and transform the indigenous along European lines. We still see this in the present. 

 Indigenous languages during colonialism and apartheid were marginalised to give 'white people' in South Africa a sense of superiority. I have noticed that this kind of privilege manifest itself in the new democratic dispensation. The term I rather uses is 'racial privilege,' because it is not restricted to ‘white people’ only. I define ‘racial privilege’ as the continuation of apartheid racial privileges in the new democratic dispensation. The only racial group, who did not have any petty racial privilege in the past, was ‘black people’. They were situated at the bottom of a very discriminative and inhuman apartheid racial hierarchy, which was given life by the Population Registration Act. 

To give you an example of how this privilege manifests itself in South Africa, let us consider the following example. There is this expectation from a 'white person’ who is asked something from someone who speaks an indigenous language that it must be in Afrikaans or English.  However, ‘white people’ do not make the same effort when they start a conversation or ask a person who speaks an indigenous language a question. They will automatically address that person in either English or Afrikaans and expect that, that person must respond to them accordingly. This is the situation at historically ‘white universities’ across South Africa. This expectation of ‘white people’ is a ‘racial privilege.’

This privilege is largely a result of how the post-apartheid society was reconstructed in terms of legislation. The thinking behind the reconstruction and transformation was to reverse or undo the inequalities that were created by apartheid. The solution was in the form of the American notion of racial transformation - affirmative action. Affirmative action aimed to redress the inequalities that were created by apartheid. However, what the proponents of affirmative action did not think of was how these racial groups of the past, now enacted in a New South Africa, would continue 'white,' 'Indian' and 'coloured' people's sense of racial superiority towards 'black' people. The continued sense of racial superiority towards black in South Africa is the result of subjection and the post-apartheid government’s inability to break away from or emancipate itself from these racial groups. [To understand and to follow this argument please read my blog post titled 'I became conscious of I.' http://jacobcloete.blogspot.co.za/2015/12/i-became-conscious-of-i.html]  

Given this, we have to view the campaigns against Afrikaans as a language policy at historically ‘white universities’ not as an attack against Afrikaans but an attempt to stop 'racial privilege' and the marginalization of indigenous languages in South Africa. The university in Africa must rethink how it would address 'racial privilege,' especially if language reinforces the dominant epistemology which in turn marginalizes indigenous peoples in the Global South.  

“I became conscious of I”

During the first semester of 2015 I was part of a reading group on the aesthetics and politics, which was facilitated by the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape.  It was while reading the required texts that I have become aware that we, young scholars, are joining age old debates somewhere in the middle, or sometimes at the end and then we exit again taking particular strands from these debates. Reflecting on the strands I took from each debate I am forced to ask the question: How do we know something is something? I always had this childhood problematic of how did “they” decide that one is one and blue is blue – could blue have been pink and one could have been three. After sharing this with my good friend Lorato her answer was simple yet profound. She said; “we convince others that something is something and then we act like something is something.” If we do not we will drive ourselves to insanity.

I reflected some more and asked myself what do I take from the reading group.  I came to the following conclusion: I have become conscious of I. From a certain age I was aware of my existence but never conscious of myself as I. And since I have become conscious of myself I realised, after reading Deleuze’s text on Bergson’s Matter and Memory and Stiegler’s “Cinematic Time” and “Cinematic Consciousness,” that the most dangerous activity, currently, is watching television or anything related to the cinematic. It robs you of the realisation that “I am I” because it alters your subconscious, your emotions, your everything. The effect it has on you is very ‘real.’ Stiegler makes the argument that your conscious flux coincide with the cinematic flux and thus it is difficult for you distinguish between the two. Evidently, you become caught up in the cinematic moment and the moment something horrific happen [for example, the Jon Snow incident in season 5 of Game of Thrones] you experience real emotions such as fear, disgust and betrayal. It is only afterwards you realise it was fiction. Another phenomenon is the pornographic experience. When you are watching porn you have a ‘real’ stimulation even though it is based on a fantasy. For you it is only a fantasy but for the actors the sex was real. Likewise, when you are watching a horror movie you might get scared to the point that you find it difficult to fall asleep even though you know it was not real. However, even after the realisation that it was not real you will find yourself recalling images of your cinematic experience. The cinematic has the potential to evoke strong emotions and believes based on fiction. In many cases it is so strong it distorts the reality of people.

How do we explain this?

We find our explanation for this phenomenon in Bergson. Bergson argues that our consciousness interpret and relate to reality in terms of images. In cinema movement is reproduced in 25 frames per second. This mean that some device took 25 photos in very short succession and when you play it back at the right speed it produces a ‘movement’ on screen. The interesting part is when your conscious recall movement it is only one image. Cinema replaces and adds new images to your ‘real’ images of your lived experiences [my reading of Stiegler]. Thus, it is possible to recall distorted images that are mix with reality and the cinematic. The more you watch the more you are transformed by the cinematic. Horkheimer and Ardorno call this the effect of the culture industry. Thus, the more time you spent in front of the television the harder it becomes to distinguish between reality and fiction. For example, the followers of Keeping up with the Khardashians look like the Khardashians. Look at the Instagram accounts of their followers and you will notice their followers mimic the lives of the Khardashians closely. They alter their reality to become that of the cinematic.

So why does this happen?

The answer is found in the desire of the subject. In the second semester reading group I was introduced to the work of Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler. Kristeva in her essay the Powers of Horror notes that you can only desire objects. The culture industry alters your desires. It makes you desire the lives of the people on the screen, an artificial live that are not real, and the people who benefit from this is the companies who sell those products. Your mind gets programmed to like a particular brand, a particular individual or a drink. We objectify the lives of celebrities and that informs our desires. When I say you desire something I refer to the subject’s desire. 

Let me explain.

Let’s take Thabo as an example. Thabo as the subject has been created since birth. Thabo’s was given the name Thabo and his parents moulded him into Thabo. As Thabo grew up he loved watching cartoons. Cartoons started to alter his desires from ‘primary’ or basic to ‘secondary;’ from food to toys. Thabo soon learns that he is a ‘he’ and not a ‘she.’ He also learns that he is ‘white’ and not ‘black.’ He learns that ‘white’ people have a particular culture and that ‘black’ people have a particular culture. That ‘black’ and ‘white’ people are too different to mix. Thabo is now almost a teenager and is not watching cartoons anymore but television programmes such as Big Bang Theory where there is hardly any ‘black’ people in it. The culture industry programmes his mind to feel comfortable in an all-white world; where ‘black’ people are almost none existent. He watches movies where the hero is ‘white’ and the girl the hero saves is ‘white.’ Slowly the culture industry is programming him to desire only ‘white’ women. As a teenager he is forced to play sport and start to read his father’s Men’s Health magazines. He is so oblivious and comfortable in an all-white world that he does not notice that all the women who are portrayed sexually desirable in the magazine are ‘white.’ Thabo soon only desire ‘white’ women and what a ‘white’ world has to offer.

Now consider this, do you want your child to spent most of his or her time in front of the television, supervised or unsupervised. Television has become the babysitter so that you can spend time online with your fake friends; even if you are sitting next to your child on the couch ‘supervising’ what he or she is watching you are distracted by Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. No wonder children are naughty and constantly seek attention because when last did parents look up from their phones to see what their children are doing.  And then we say children grow-up and mature too fast nowadays. This is not the case. Their consciousness are filled with images that are mature and they find it hard to distinguish between reality and fiction. Thus, even though they seem more mature they are not mature since with maturity comes experience. They can mimic maturity and not necessarily be mature. Children need constant attention and reaffirmation; the last thing you want is your child getting it from a fictional world.

Thus, manoeuvring through the texts of the 2015 reading group I became conscious of I. It is only now that I can put an experience I had a couple of years back in the Namaqualand National Park into context. It was away from the confined spaces of my room and office and in the open spaces of nature that I realise I am alive. It was away from the haste of everyday life and the mass media that I realised that I am alive. It was only in the open spaces of nature that I become conscious of my existence, that I am awake. It is only now I realise the way of living in rural areas is to understand the philosophy of living without; where you are satisfied with yourself in relation to the little that you have. Or as my friend Lorato puts it ‘you are also satisfied with yourself, knowing that you can acquire more if you want to.’ This philosophy is possible because most parts of their lives are far removed from the culture industry and the massification of consciousness. It was I who sat on the bench during my lunch time writing this.

I became conscious of I .

The Poor Boy

I feel terrible! I did something I am not proud of. I did something so middleclass. I have become cold and insensitive to the lot of the poor.
Maybe this is because I am bombarded by it on a daily basis. Or maybe I saw myself in the eyes of the child who asked me for a R1 at the Bellville train station. Maybe it is because that was me growing up: begging for 20c and 50c, so I could also buy me the things other children were eating.
Later when I saw that child crying and his mother reprimanded him for that - I prayed to God that, that it must never be my child one day.
And even though my heart softened and I wanted to give him the money, I still did not. I rather soothed my conscience like a typical middleclass would: do not give a person a fish rather teaches him how to fish. Bullshit!!!
That simple middleclass bullshit allowed me to walk away, and to push the incident to the back of my mind. But as I was taking a shower tonight it came back to haunt me and taunt me. It was telling me that I am no different then the people I despise - the middleclass.
It was then I realised I have become middleclass.
Jacob the poor boy who used to walk barefoot to school in the middle of winter has finally made it to the cold and sanitized middleclass.
Jacob the boy whose mother was and still is a domestic worker, and who was raised by farm workers can finally afford and own the movies he used to sell his dignity for at the neighbours' house.
Jacob the boy who begged for money can finally treat another poor boy the way he was treated.
He walk away but not before the child imprinted a lasting image on his conscience that will keep returning as a reminder of what he has become.

Can you afford the new South Africa?

I was visiting my dear friend Thendo in Milnerton when it struck me: he is living in the ‘new South Africa’ – in Mandela’s Rainbow Nation. He lives in the kind of community where you see black and white kids of equal social standing play together. In his kind of South Africa the race and nationality of the next door neighbours do not matter. 

What really matter though are the cost of living and the taxes you pay. This is the price you must be willing to pay for your piece of Mandela’s ‘new South Africa.’

In his community the conversations are not limited to cars, hoes and sport, or to furniture, colour schemes and hair styles. Actually we did not speak about any of these. We had conversations about our Rector begging for money in the Mail & Guardian and why the BRT system has to be in Milnerton and not in Khayelitsha. Debates on whether, we are middleclass or working class, and interestingly enough none of us see ourselves as middleclass – we see ourselves as part of the working class. Rather wishful thinking but allow us to have our wishful thinking.

It was during this visit I realised that the ‘new South Africa’ comes at a price and if you want it you must be willing to pay for it. You have to pay for a truly interracial, interethnic and international experience. Pay to be relatively safer than others. Pay to have the BRT at your door step. This is the kind of life we were promised in 1994 but it is now only accessible to those who have university degrees and have far better jobs than the majority of South Africans. Not that there is anything wrong with pursuing a better life and escaping poverty, I am applauding anyone who strive for a better life; I myself is pursuing Utopia.

However, I cannot help but wondering how we got here? How did the middle class become Mandela’s new South Africa?

Mandela’s new South Africa and the poor’s new South Africa are two completely different ones. The poor’s new South Africa is a life with access to water, electricity, health care, housing and employment. Racial integration is the least of the poor’s worries. 

The reason why the middle class appear to be Mandela's new South Africa is because the majority of black people in 1994 were poor and only a handful was in the middleclass. In 1994 the middleclass was predominantly white and now 20 years down the line there are more black people in the middleclass and still almost no white people in the working class. This also shows that the status quo for white people largely stayed the same whilst the standard of living for black people marginally increased. 

The interracial, interethnic and international transformation of the middleclass is thus largely an appearance; the reality is that more black people can afford a middleclass lifestyle. Hence, Mandela’s new South Africa comes at a price: a university degree, a house loan, car finance, a contract phone, medical aid and dog food. 

A price the poor cannot afford.

“It is not yet Uhuru”

Introduction
The author of the above quote is Oginga Odinga. He was influential in the struggle for Kenya’s independence and became the first vice president of an independent Kenya. Uhuru is a Swahili word which means freedom and he therefore implies that Africans are not yet emancipated since Africa’s independence. A postcolonial period is what the name suggests; an era after colonialism which must be free from any form of colonial oppression. However, if we analyze the period after colonialism, we will find that the quality of existence for most ‘black’ Africans did not change much since the independence of Africa. The only obvious change is the emergence of a small affluent ‘black’ elite in Africa, whilst the majority of ‘black’ Africans are poor. This begs the question: Are we really free? This essay will attempt to answer this question by arguing that freedom in Africa is not yet achieved. And will, therefore firstly, discuss freedom in a postcolonial Africa and lastly, it will look at the ‘back to route’ movement which is essentially going to explain where it all went wrong for Africa after independence.

Freedom in postcolonial Africa
What does freedom in a postcolonial Africa entail? How can freedom be obtain and maintained in a postcolonial Africa? These are some the questions we need to ask ourselves as political studies students when we want to found out if we are really free. Freedom in postcolonial Africa is a very contentious issue with many arguments but with no clear answer. And it seems as none of these arguments can help poor ‘black’ Africans to achieve the freedom that they have been waited for since the independence of Africa. Before we can start a discussion on freedom in a postcolonial Africa, we will firstly have to look at the various levels which Africa was colonized and secondly at the meaning of freedom that one of the leading political scholars in Africa provides us with in his book Uhuru Na Maendeleo (Freedom and Development).

According to Ture & Hamilton (1992: 6-23) colonialism had operated in three areas which were politics, economics and culture. During colonialism political decisions which affected Africans were made by colonial powers through a process of British indirect rule and the French assimilation. Further, the colonial project from the beginning was an economic project; colonial powers came to Africa not to ‘civilize’ but to exploit them economically. On, the cultural front colonial powers created an ideology that “relegated the black man to a subordinated, inferior status in society” (Ture & Hamilton: 1992: 23). This therefore meant that for Africans to be completely decolonized they had to be decolonized at all three levels. More simply put, is that they had to operate completely independent from the West at all three levels. The next section will discuss freedom in a post colonial era.

Julius Nyerere argues that there are three forms of freedom: (i) national freedom - which is the freedom of citizens to determine their own future; (ii) freedom from hunger, disease, and poverty; and (iii) individual freedom - which includes the right to live in dignity and equality and the right to freedom of speech, etc. For Africans to be free in a postcolonial Africa they have to experiences all three forms of freedom. But, as people that stay in Africa, we are all aware of the inequalities that are present in our societies. This, therefore, seems as that we as Africans in a postcolonial Africa are partly free. We are free to choose our government and our individual freedoms are protected by our constitutions, but we are not free from poverty, hunger and disease.

Firstly, the reason for this is that during the struggle for Africa’s independence we “decided for practical reasons to accept a fragment of independence” (Fanon; 1987: 120). The “fragment of independence” that Fanon here refer to is that we have exchanged economic power for political power and because we do not have the economic power we are burdened by social inequalities such as poverty, hunger and disease. This also means that we were never economically decolonized. A classic example would be how the ANC, during negotiations for a democratic South Africa, had to choose between economic power and political power. Today 15 years since the first democratic elections in South Africa this is still visible, the ANC has the political power and the ‘whites’ has the economic power. Inequalities, in Africa, are entrenched by Western capitalism through neo-colonialism. Neo-colonialism “addresses itself essentially to the middle class and to the intellectuals of the colonial country” (Fanon; 1987: 122) and therefore it creates unequal relationship between ‘black’ people in Africa. This unequal relationship causes the emergence of a small ‘black’ elite and the poor ‘black’ masses in a postcolonial Africa. And as long as we will have Western capitalism present in a postcolonial Africa we will not be free from Western oppression.

The second challenge that we face Africa is intellectual colonization. Intellectual colonization is a result of cultural colonization. Intellectual colonization makes us accept the unequal relationship that Western capitalism portrays as ‘right’. For example, every time we watch something on television the ideas of Western capitalism are being fed to us ‘as the right way of life.’ This simply means that you as the audience want to live your life like those ones on television. You want to drive their cars, you want to go to their schools and you want to do their jobs. But not knowing you are agreeing to the veiled inequalities that this life presents. To drive that car, to live in that house and to do that job, you are in support of the idea that some people must be rich whilst some must be poor; and some must be the servant whilst others are the boss. This entrench inequalities in Africa and deny Africans from the freedom which many had died for.

Where it all did went wrong for Africa
The ‘back to route’ movement explains where it all went wrong for Africa. There are number of arguments that we can discuss but this section will discuss the work of Issa Shivji. He wrote a document which is titled ‘The silences in the NGO Discourse’ in which he discusses how freedom in Africa was taken. Firstly, he notices that the generation of African nationalist, after Africa’s independence, crafted a form of nationalism which was modelled on that of the colonial powers but the ideological genesis of African nationalism lay in Pan-Africanism (Shivji; 2006: 6). Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah has realised that in order for African nationalism to work it must happen in Pan-Africanism, if not independent African stated will become pawns on a chess board for European imperialists’ (Shivji; 2006: 6). This was the biggest mistake most African leaders made. They went for self-interest over the interest of the majority. This gave Western imperialist the opportunity to regain their grip on Africa through various ways such as supporting corrupt African governments if they benefit from it and by only supporting “crisis-ridden economies” (Shivji; 2006: 9), if African governments adopted the structural adjustment programmes by the Bretton Woods institutions.

Towards Uhuru in Africa in the 21st century

A number of scholars has came with solutions to fix the Uhuru problem. This section, however, will only discuss the work of Julius Nyerere and Thabo Mbeki. Julius Nyerere suggests the following solution:

Our first step, therefore must be to re-educate ourselves; to regain our former attitude of mind. In our traditional African society we were individuals within a community. We took care of the community, and the community took care of us. We neither needed nor wished to exploit our fellow man (1973: 166).

His solution according to Bogue (2003: 103) brings two aspects to the fore which needs to be considered to enable us to achieve human equality: they are (1) intellectual decolonization and (2) the relationship between the individual and the community. Julius Nyerere wrote Ujamaa as a political framework to stimulate the intellectual decolonization of Africans, after the independence of Tanzania. His thought was based on human equality. If we study his concept of human equality it is apparent that human equality may achieve freedom. The second aspect means that you have individual rights within the community but your rights must not be greater than that of the common good of the community. This, therefore, entails you to generated wealth as an individual for the greater good of the community and not for your selfish needs.

Posted by Jacob Cloete ©

 Posted June 02, 2011

The Constrasts of a Democratic South Africa

Our visit this week to Gugulethu once again have revealed the many contrasts of the reconstruction of the post-apartheid society. Firstly, there was the really poor and the affluent. The poor stay in really tiny shacks with no running water or proper sanitation whilst the affluent stays in big houses with high walls and alarm systems (See photo 1 and 2 in the Gugulethu Folder).

Secondly, Gugulethu also have a very rich struggle history. Most of the prominent ANC leaders of Cape Town are from Gugs (as it is informally known). One of the most well-known sites in Gugs that are visited by many tourists is the Gugulethu Seven Memorial. However, I have noticed that some youngsters have vandalised the monument by writing on it. This shows the ignorance of the youth towards their history, a history that has been written in blood (see photo 3 and 4 in the Gugulethu Folder).

Thirdly, there are those that nothing to eat whilst there are those that have so much to eat that they do not know what to do with the left-overs. Those of us that have been to Gugs surely would have been to Mzolis. A place the local elite and tourists hang out. If you have money you can order as much meat as you desire and then you can try and devour it. You will also find in Gugs people that do not have food to eat and have to struggle on a daily basis to make ends meet (see photos 5 and 6 in the Gugulethu Folder).

So the contrasts go on and on and on. It is really sad that most of us who are in a much better situation look at the government to do something about poverty, and by doing this we are shifting our responsibility to the state. A close friend of mine  has the following to say about our responsibilities as citizens: “We as South Africans need to stop complaining about what the government did not do or need to do and take the responsibility and initiative towards changing our lives and the lives of others for the better. Government must be seen as a tool in helping us getting there but not an excuse of why we not getting there”. So look around in your community and identify the contrasts and do something about it.

Posted by: Jacob Cloete
22 May 2011
Photos © Jacob Cloete