Let me confess that I was not personally offended by Zelda le Grange's twitter outburst. That it caused some offence in sections of South African society is, however, understandable.
Recently we have seen the re-emergence of racism from the shadows back into mainstream South African society, with ever increasing impudence.
The politeness (I will not say "pretence") of the 1990s, the halcyon era of Rainbowism, seems to have lost its guilt-embalming appeal.
Those days seem ages ago, when everyone, black and white, were supposedly always the biggest opponents of Apartheid. One always wondered how it was that the system endured as long as it did when exactly no one had supported it! But that is a digression.
The point is that true colours are increasingly difficult to conceal. The Internet and social media in particular have played no small part in this needed expose.
This is welcome because genuine dialogue on perhaps the defining problem facing South African society can finally ensue in earnest. Ultimately we can only fell the giants that we identify and acknowledge.
It is this new candour that would have emboldened Zelda to make her ill-considered comments with the expectation of the usual social impunity.
It is unfortunate that Zelda came to bear the sharp edge of a simmering volcano of black indignance for her comparatively innocuous tweets, particularly in view of the daily and ubiquitous bigotry endured by black South Africans in cyberspace and other social spaces.
Though I may not agree with what seems an unfair singling out of Zelda, I do hope we are witnessing the moment when black South Africans finally discover their cyber voice.
An impoverished soul is defined by its acceptance of abnormality. Bitter experience has taught it that suffering and injustice are its star-scripted lot in life.
Familiarity with powerlessness teaches the afflicted party that any action is futile. An outrage is either excused or silently borne. This is the world that has been inhabited by black South Africans for decades.
A low estimation of their own value, as a result of systemic injustice, designed to emboss that very message, is responsible for a troubling tendency for black South Africans to see the world through the eyes of the other. This renders them susceptible, at times, to the jarring habit of silently grumbling, at best. At worst, justifying behaviour that should never be tolerated.
This mentality was entrenched during the apogee of colonial and apartheid power. In particular the period between the last of the frontier wars in 1878 and the emergence of the black consciousness movement in the late 1960s.
This was a dismal period characterised by the towering might of the apartheid-colonial machinery over a largely defeated African population. The consensus against racism, at least at the rhetorical level, only came to capture the mainstream of western public opinion during the latter stages of the 20th century. The struggle against South Africa institutional racism last century was therefore mostly a forlorn voice in a desolate wilderness.
Though there was some black resistance, notably the momentous formation of what came to be known as the ANC in 1912, all of it was nevertheless before the silhouette of a gold-crusted power constellation of English capital and Afrikaner nationalism that loomed imperiously over the conquered natives.
The crucial element imbued by the black consciousness movement was a new appreciation of the power of black agency. It gave them a new voice. Its distinction from the ANC was the mass influence it wielded.
It infused a new confidence that the sheer volume of the black population could triumph over their nuclear- armed adversary. It became the intellectual backbone behind the class of 1976. The un-governability movement of the 1980s that finally toppled apartheid was spawned by this new found agency.
The democratic dispensation was the culmination of a number of factors, not least this rediscovered agency. It had a violent and chaotic edge to it, which was ideal in contending with a political system that was organised, sophisticated and well versed in the language of violence.
The instruments that were employed successfully against apartheid have become somewhat blunt if not destructive in a democratic landscape that rewards social confidence and education. A new environment calls for a new approach, not least the ability to engage in cyber space as a means of rebalancing the skewed socio-cultural power equation.
Discovering this cyber voice is crucial for the continuing normalisation of South African society that is still characterised by an asymmetric distribution of socio-economic power along apartheid constructed lines.
Apart from the political power conferred by sheer numerical volume, socio-cultural power continues to inordinately favour those with the general advantage of language, education, economic connections and resources. In other words white South Africans, who have hitherto used it effectively to guide the contours and flow of popular opinion. This advantage manifests indubitably in the increasingly important arena of cyber discourse.
This is a function of a lopsided economic environment and jarring educational disparities inherited from Apartheid but tragically perpetuated by the post-apartheid ANC government.
The outrage from “black twitter”, though it unfairly chose a “soft” target, must develop into a constant readiness to apply social pressure on those who align themselves with bigoted ideas. Their freedom of speech must be matched by the freedom to show commensurate displeasure.
To be a self-respecting human being comes with the capacity to be outraged by a suffered injustice. It is heartening to see that black South Africans are learning this too.
