“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand” (Matthew 12:25)
These words were first spoken two thousand years ago by Jesus of Nazareth as a response to His detractors who, in a failed attempt to discredit Him, accused Him of casting out demons by Beelzebub the prince of demons. The subtext being that even Satan understood this principle. The great American president Abraham Lincoln was to repeat them in 1858 to highlight the untenable continuation of a half slave owning and non-slave owning United States of America, ideas that would be consummated by blood. Approaching twenty years since the advent of democracy, our hope to endure and prosper well into the twentieth century and beyond would be well served by hearkening to the same message: a house divided cannot stand!
Our country faces no greater challenge to its unity, cohesion and enduring prosperity than the gnawing spectre of racism. Perhaps this ought not be too surprising given stubborn, subterranean and often unchecked beliefs in the superiority of the white race, which had earlier found expression in apartheid.
This iniquitous system which catapulted the national party to power in 1948, had been seen by some as an “ingenious” solution to the “native question”, which had troubled man of such intellectual dexterity as General JC Smuts who simply could not fathom the thought that South Africans of African descent could live side by side with their white counterparts, in a environment of mutual respect, equality and citizenship.
No longer able to contain his exasperation, Smuts once confessed, “When I consider the political future of the natives in South Africa I must say that I look into the shadows and darkness, and then I feel inclined to shift the intolerable burden of solving that sphinx problem to the ampler shoulders and stronger brains of the future“.
Feeling the burden of this “sphinx problem”, John Merriman, the last Prime Minister of the Cape Colony before the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, had earlier lamented, “I wish we had no black men in South Africa”. Seeing as Providence had so determined, he had to concede with these ominously prescient words that ignoring it would be “to build on a volcano, the suppressed force of which must some day burst forth in a destroying flood, as history warns us it has always done.”
Under the scheme of apartheid, black South Africans would be given the “privilege” of self-governance in their own reserves where they would ostensibly enjoy the privileges of citizenship governed by their own “people” by their own customs. The Verwoerdian vision captured the imagination of the times. It seemed an elegant way of dealing with the nagging problem, while simultaneously deftly sidestepping the gnawing moral pitfalls, under the pretext of preserving black culture and autonomy.
Of course black South Africans were not so simple as to overlook the obvious bigotry, refusing to be duped by this show of “graciousness”. They rightfully resisted, reluctantly resorting to a decades-long armed struggle, having despaired of the efficacy of peaceful means. Though a full-blown civil war would be averted, violent racial tension made the country a difficult place in which to live. The pressure of the consequent civil unrest, economic and sports sanctions as well as the stigma of the country’s pariah status, culminated in the ineluctable dawn of the democratic era, a “miracle” that rightly brought the country into the gaze of an admiring global community.
Without taking anything way from the “rainbow moment”, with hindsight it seems the change was brought about largely by pragmatism than any sense of contrition over the immorality of apartheid. Evolving western views on racism had given rise to intensified international sanctions against the country, effectively crippling its economy, which was a crucial factor in the eventual capitulation.
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 also aided matters. It had given tactical, moral and financial support to the liberation effort. Its demise therefore allayed concerns about the imminence of a dreaded communist revolution, which had served as what some consider as merely a pretext to cover what was otherwise a visceral aversion to democratic reforms. Negotiations could therefore commence in earnest.
An assessment of race relations twenty years later reflects sporadic improvements but leaves much to be desired in light of the grandeur of the idea of the rainbow nation. Some might cynically contend that we have seen nothing more than cosmetic changes from the days of our dark past. Changes that appear at times more induced than embraced and usually not without much resentment from largely unwilling protagonists. Indeed, much of our inter-racial engagement continues to be characterised by suspicion, distrust, smouldering resentment, scarcely concealed condescension, exclusion and forced smiles. The ideal of harmonious, deep and equitable cross-racial relationships remains largely a dream deferred.
The roots and the nature of racism in South Africa are highly complex, and a view that purports a complete understanding can rightly be considered presumptuous. Equally, it would be disingenuous equating racism to the unpardonable sin or one that every white South African suffers from. Certainly any attempts to ascribe moral superiority to any people group by virtue of its standing on this question would be duplicitous. Indeed, the honest among us will find it difficult to dispute the biblical proclamation, “there is no difference, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”.
It is not my thesis here that this is the only or even necessarily the greatest problem facing South Africa today. It is only one of the many challenges we face. Nevertheless, it is well within our collective interests to remain indefatigable in contending with injustice wherever and whenever it surfaces, particularly when its persistence imperils the hope of realising an idea so core to our incipient national identity - that of the rainbow nation, one on which many have sadly long despaired, considering it farcical and a cruel illusion in the face of persisting racism.
It could be argued that in dealing with racism, we have fallen prey to the error of presuming that the abrogation of apartheid laws marked its end in South Africa. It is not uncommon hearing from proponents of this line of reasoning repeated appeals for black people to move on and leave the past behind. While a forward-looking orientation is crucial to our progress as a nation, this should not amount to a failure to deal with present realities, rooted in our fractious past. Indeed, the nurtured and oft-unchallenged notion of the supposed inherent superiority of white people, explained by nothing other their whiteness, is a present and not a past reality. It can only be for our collective benefit to lay the proverbial axe to the root.
A deeper reflection on racism illuminates a condition with roots common to all humanity. To varying degrees, we are all given to the universal vice of prejudice, founded, among other things, on fear. Fear that we are not quite adequate and that we will one day be found out. A fear that has many faces, not least a desire to portray an imagined sense of superiority over the next person. Translated into a people group in relation to another, we call this racism. Accordingly, the origins of racism, as it came to be experienced in South Africa, found spurious justification from theological, scientific and cultural anchors respectively through passing of various historical epochs.
Self-serving interpretations of scripture sought to portray black people, the putative descendents of Ham, even with the tenuous biblical substantiation, as a cursed race and therefore subject to subservience and subjugation. This was further conflated with a twisted version of Calvinism that mischievously condemned black people as irredeemably predestined for perdition. The advent of rationalism and the concomitant cultural shift away from biblical Christianity came to weaken reliance on biblical authority. A new intellectual anchor needed to be found. This brought into play Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
Charles Darwin’s seminal work, tellingly entitled “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, came to take central stage in defining human consciousness, according to which it seemed an acceptable proposition in Western popular thought to consider black people as inferior to their white counterparts, owing to a lower place on the supposed evolutionary scale. After all, so the argument went, Europeans were streets ahead in technological and cultural sophistication. This coincided with the enslavement of black people, colonialism and apartheid. All of which had the added consequence of adversely shaping the mind of both actors, entrenching habits of superiority and subservience that served to reinforce the original lie and thus promoting a pernicious vicious cycle.
Of course the test of time would betray these arguments, robbing them of their prominence in mainstream Western consciousness. They would be driven to the fringes of society and at times the shadows, where they would continue to lurk unnoticed. It is curious that despite the obvious injustice, particularly in a culture supposedly steeped in Judeo-Christian morality, the change of mind came only after much resistance, bloodshed and time. The moral authority, tenacity and sometimes militancy of such giants as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson Mandela played a pivotal role in raising the profile of the injustice of racism and thus reshaping Western popular opinion, with South African being among the last bastions of institutionalised racism.
My contention here rests not on a belief in uniformity for its own sake. I contend rather for the inherent equality in dignity and worth of all human beings. Our histories that were nurtured continents apart by vastly divergent exigencies make our differences unavoidable. Rather than a limitation, this is a strength that contributes to the wealth and vibrancy of our nation. The challenge and opportunity before us is to harness the latent treasures of our rich diversity and forge them into a competitive advantage that makes us a cohesive and unstoppable force in global business, the arts, engineering, science, sports, technology and international relations.
President JC Smuts, a brilliant man by all accounts, with uncharacteristic cowardice and myopia, opted to transfer the resolution of our inter-racial challenges to the “ampler shoulders and stronger brains of future”. How dearly we have all paid for his abdication of responsibility! In taking up his challenge however, we must accept that the full realisation of the boundless potential of our rainbow nation requires for the perennial issue of racism to be finally laid to rest. We owe our progeny no less!
Without burdening each other with the overwhelming weight of guilt, we do well to remember that apartheid was merely a fruit of a tree that remains with us. Its end was a commendable start. Nevertheless, we remain with the arduous task of dealing with its resilient progenitor, racism. This task can only begin with an acknowledgement of its existence, a simple proposition that has so far proven surprisingly illusive.
