“And more than anything, my body, as well as my
soul, do not allow yourself to cross your arms like a sterile
spectator, for life is not a spectacle, for a sea of sorrows is not a
stage, for a man who cries out is not a dancing bear.”
Aimé Césaire
Being ‘Indian’
in post-apartheid society is a precarious position. Apartheid aimed
to create a racial hierarchy in which ‘Indians’ straddled a
middle position. Legally, socially and economically they were given
privileges not awarded to African people but these were limited and
served to keep them inferior to white people but more privileged than
races lower down the ladder.
They were able to own businesses, land
and were privy to slightly better education in their House of
Delegates schools in which learning in English (which was mother
tongue to many by that time) was an advantage and allowed them to
access jobs and the economy with greater ease, in fact many were
groomed for administrative positions. At the same time they too were
raced as ‘black’ and were subject to racial inferiority at the
hands of the apartheid government. This duality of superiority and
inferiority seems to be carried over into the post-apartheid society
with dangerous results.
It should be said at
the outset, not all ‘Indian’ people opposed Apartheid, the many
that did however, did so in various ways. For some the struggle meant
joining the Black Consciousness movement (BC) or the communist party
and rejecting all forms of culturalist politics including later, the
tricameral system. For others it meant fighting for minority rights
through culturalist parties like the Natal Indian Congress and the
Transvaal Indian Congress. For those who rejected culturalist
politics altogether they assumed a black political identity and
continued to do so after the end of apartheid.
At the onset of
democracy and our negotiated settlement, politicised ‘Indian’
people in culturalist movements like the NIC, immediately collapsed
their own political organisations and embraced the idea of a new
democratic and free nation. Thus while these movements joined the
ANC, at the same time there were many Indians, especially in the
poorer townships like Phoenix and Chatsworth who voted for the
National Party and who thought, and continue to think, their racial
privileges under apartheid would offer them a better life than
equality under democracy. For those who joined the mass movement at
the end of apartheid it was assumed that it would speak for all
voices within it even if it did so in a separatist ‘multi-cultural’
manner. Thus Indian teachers in Natal closed their Natal Indian
teachers’ society and joined SADTU, it was assumed the movement
would speak for all equally in a way which did not negate the
particularly harrowing experience of African educators under
apartheid and the need to rectify and fix things collectively and
according to different needs.
Today many feel as
if they have been swallowed up by a movement obsessed with Black
Economic Empowerment (BEE), crudely practised in which only the
wealthy seem to benefit, as well as a return to culturalist
charismatic politics. The need for this kind of culturalist politics
in the struggle against Apartheid is tenuously debated, especially
amongst members of the UDF, SACP and BC movements who never supported
multiculturalism as an option at all, thus while its existence is
precarious in itself, its persistence after the racially stratified
system of Apartheid is possibly even more absurd. This has been
evident in and after Jacob Zuma’s particularly ethnically
orientated election campaign and his subsequent election as the Zulu
leader of the African National Congress. In many ways these
practices have lead to a popular sense of marginalisation of
‘Indians’ within the movement but not at a business and political
elite level. It is reflective of the disjuncture between the elites
and the popular base within the movement, and while the wealthy (both
African and Indian) are well represented in the top ranks of the
movement and government, it is often done in a way which entrenches
culturalist politics rather than moves away from it, while at the
bottom and in party rhetoric there is a sense of popular
marginalisation.
The particular
frowns an ‘Indian’ receives amongst some in these movements for
identifying with a ‘black political identity’ has served to
distance ‘Indian’ people from mainstream politics as well feed
the apathy and unconsciousness of ‘Indian’ youth toward anything
political. It has made me speaking about Indians here acceptable,
because they have remained inward looking and adopted their lived
experience as ‘‘Indian’’ as an Identity in itself, it is
reflective of the turn from non-racialism within the black
consciousness and UDF movements as well as the trade unions to the
multi-culturalist and classist politics we see practiced in
mainstream politics today.
This is most telling
within ‘Indian’ townships themselves, in which the Fanonian
“collective conscious” is present. They too try to lactify
themselves by reproaching each other for speaking like ‘an Indian’
for dressing like ‘An Indian’ or behaving like ‘an Indian’.
It functions as a self-check system in which the projected ideals
work to create a certain ‘type of Indian’, which is tied into a
global elite, seeking to lactify itself. This lactification is
inherently tied to wealth especially amongst ‘Indians’ in which
remnants of a colour and money based caste system are still strongly
felt amongst them. Thus all rituals and traditions that are seen to
be backward like black fowl prayers, Khata and Junda and Porridge
prayers in which people receive a trance state and channel specific
gods etc, must be cast away. Indian traditional wear must start to
look more and more western and western clothing must not bear even
the slightest hint of “Indianess” one speck of sequins on a pair
of jeans is an immediate deal breaker.
This is compounded
in situations where one is in a multiracial environment, then the
‘Indian’, even the well trained, well lactified ones must work
even harder to prove they have left all their ‘backward’ ways
behind them. Having never encountered the white people they try their
best to imitate through mediated experience, upon meeting them, one
realises all efforts were in vain.
One cannot shake the
accent, one cannot shake the colour, your skin betrays you long
before your trained fake accent has the chance. It is too late. They
have identified you: The Indian.
So you try harder,
you become more confident, you show them how liberal you are, you
show them how intelligent you are, assert yourself so that they might
register your humanity before your race. You avoid the sun as much as
possible to stay on the right side of the Indian colour spectrum,
since the lighter you are, the more beautiful according to this
standard and it is not uncommon for ‘Indian’ women to use copious
amounts of skin lightening products, but alas it is all in vain. The
project has failed, a few might, over a prolonged period of contact
with you, become convinced of your individuality, then they throw off
their cultural categories, no longer consider you an ‘Indian’ and
you might become one of them.
But as soon as it is
done you develop a sick feeling in your stomach. Your neurosis
becomes even more heightened, you realise they have bestowed on you
something you hadn’t asked for, but probably all you’re going to
get. They accept you into their privilege and whiteness. Do you
accept then? Do you become one of them, and forsake your “own
people”? This is the chance to become one of them. Secretly
you know full well you will never be one of them, you enjoy talking
about them in private, fully aware of the inferiority they
relentlessly confer on you. You ignore the constant references to
culture and tradition and ‘close-knit communities’, ‘chilli’
and ‘eastern spirituality’. You ignore it, so that you do not
offend them, so that they do not change their minds and revoke the
membership. You try as hard as possible not to be too ‘Indian’,
just enough so that they can claim to have an ‘Indian’ friend not
so much that they can’t understand your difference.
Thus for people who
have examined their circumstances, for those who see beyond the
rainbow nation, to the true humanity that could come with a full
decolonisation project, the lived experience as a person of colour is
enough to make one want full, absolute, totalising equality free of
all complexes superior and inferior.
So one faces a
battle on three fronts, one must challenge white hegemony first and
foremost therefore one must struggle to throw off the inferiority
complex conferred on us through Apartheid but also one in which we
constantly confer on ourselves, in some sense the ‘type of Indian’
that is strived for is one that sees itself as part of a global elite
still very much governed and policed by whiteness.Secondly one must
also prove oneself in black political circles today. So entrenched
are apartheid colour systems that even some African ‘black’
people ignore the shared political history and experience, they
ignore the lived reality and they sometimes themselves buy into
‘Indian’ constructed identity. The media constructs the ‘Indian’
identity as inherently cultural, traditional and static but also
mystifying, exotic and other, in a way which makes ‘Indian’
people ‘unknown’ to others, steeped in their traditions and
closed off to the rest of society. And for good reason, many ‘Indian’
people buy into ‘Indian’ constructed identity as middle class
semi-privileged and almost white, or even better than white in some
instances, they would rather be identified as one step up the ladder
from blackness and two down from whiteness, rather than having no
ladder at all. Lastly, one must defend one’s ability also to
identify with the ‘Indian’ lived cultural and political
experience. Time and time again I have seen ‘Indian’ activists
having to defend themselves and their black political identity to
other ‘Indians’ who feel as if they are betraying some kind of
cultural boundary as if fighting for equality and humanity of all
collectively means somehow rejecting one’s culture which no doubt
has value in and of itself but does not and should not translate into
monolithic identity.
In many instances
the rainbow nation has not meant even the blunt and problematic
multiculturalism it proposes, it has been the replacing of one kind
of species with another, the black and the white. And that black has
come to mean African only even in some mainstream left circles. My
own experience with SASCO was always one which exceptionalised my
colour rather than included it in blackness., There are exceptions,
of course there always are, but the point I am trying to make is that
the absurdity of race, this “black on black” violence which Fanon
warns about is prevalent even within the left. The idea of having to
be responsible for one’s whole history and culture and ancestry is
a shared burden of ‘Indian’ people, more so because every
reference to ‘Indians’ in South Africa, is reference to the
nationality of Indian, a lived experience that we neither share nor
identify with. This mythologizing of Indian culturalism in the media
about and by ‘Indian’ people, works to maintain a peripheral,
marginalised role for ‘Indian’ South Africans more so because
they are happy to adopt it. Many ‘Indian’ women are happy to be
seen as the ‘exotic other’: chaste and virtuous cultural
beauties. The sub-culture is a profoundly uniquely South African one,
and while they bear some similarities in culture to India (for
obvious reasons) South African Indians know little about Indian
politics or popular culture or socio-economic lived reality. Yet the
colour of their skins hems them into their circle of Indian so that
any individuality is seen as whiteness and any attempt to positively
identify with black is seen as a betrayal of one’s roots, even
though 150 years of history would tell us that our roots are firmly
here.
They, like others
have suffered sever disillusionment at the hands of the ANC and trade
unions like SADTU and by extension COSATU who has kept a strong class
consciousness but has failed to discipline its affiliate. The
worrying element here is not the disillusionment but the forms of
praxis this disillusionment has birthed. In many instances this has
created a return to culturalist politics, a protection of their
minority status and a guarding of the ‘Indian’ identity. The
result of this process has been an entrenchment of Indianess, and a
move to create closer and greater ties to what is commonly referred
to as the ‘motherland’ of India. This is a peculiarity in itself
because of the large difference in lived reality of South African
Indians and Indians. The greatest concern is that they have not
problematised this racial category but willingly taken it on, not as
a lived experience but as an Identity, not as evolving culture but as
static traditions, morals and values that remain stagnant and unable
to evolve not to a standard of whiteness but towards the veritable
creation of a new humanity.
So much so, that
today, this dualism of identity, the neither here nor there-ness of
‘Indian’ identity has become particularly difficult to negotiate.
Having bought into the colour bar system of Apartheid in an attempt
to lactify themselves, ‘Indian’s have waived their inferiority
complex to assume a middle-class identity that allows them to
exercise authority and superiority over ‘African’ people. They
have chosen to accept striving for whiteness and align themselves
with a ‘white’ political identity rather than taking up and
working toward deconstructing the inferiority complex which they
often feel but accept for ‘small’ privileges, which are by no
measure small in economic currency but miniscule when compared to the
currency of self.
It has meant the
almost complete de-politicisation of ‘Indian’ identity,
acquiescence to middle-class cultural cookie cutter version of
‘Indian’ identity. This is overwhelming evident in middle –class;
elite ‘Indian’ Youth culture, in which driving BMW’s with
tinted windows, gelled hair and Levis Jeans while mixing with other
versions of oneself at ‘Indian’ clubs and restaurants is a way of
checking out of reality and by extension the political. It is a
negation of history, of shared political experience of oppression and
it is at the very root the negation of thinking. The consumer-culture
frenzied ‘Indian’ youth is completely unwilling to engage in any
political dialogue let alone to take up the struggle and become
conscientised.
Every once in a
while, from the margins, an older ‘former ANC loyalist’, will
speak about their political experiences, will try to reinvigorate
some political life amongst ‘Indian’s but mostly it falls on deaf
ears. The class consciousness of many ‘privileged’ ‘Indian’
people has become decidedly middle-class so that freedom is equated
with economic power and by extension with whiteness. So convinced are
they of their superior business skills that they believe success in
their predetermined careers will buy them access to the white
political identity in which they might be able to finally overcome
their inferiority complex, as if money could buy them out of it. This
de-politicisation process works to create a class of accountants,
doctors and pharmacists, and business people who never have to
confront their race because they have created a middle-class haven
for themselves, in which they can buy the lifestyles of white people
and they are still better than African people. It is the creation of
an uncritical class of unthinkers who are happy to be a synecdoche:
to be constantly objectified in the media; in society and amongst
themselves than to become true selves, subjects among subjects.
Thus while one can
critique the nationalist movements like the ANC and SADTU as an aid
to this culturalist/classist turn, it is also a choice: a choice not
to choose the political, not to choose freedom and not to be
actional. It is also an acceptance of hegemony. ‘Indian’ people
(and it is must be said here that this applies only to people who
choose this identity, it is not a blanketing generalisation of all
South African ‘Indians’ many of whom have chosen not to engage in
this kind of culturalism) have chosen to remain in the roles that
were, have been and continue to be ascribed to them through society,
through the media and through their own non-critical interactions
with each other and they are in danger of becoming the largest
contributors to the useless bourgeoisie. The creation of their own
sects of privilege in public spaces leads only to further
mystification of them as the exotic other when quite frankly there is
nothing exotic about sharing a common skin colour and perhaps a few
cultural similarities with a billion other people in the world. The
curiousness of this situation is that in creating this very brown
space, they are not exempting themselves from the racism that is
present is our society, by not engaging with it not only are they
complicit in their abuse but the safe space for ‘Indians’ from
townships to upper class ‘Indian’ suburbs allows their othering
and makes it harder for ‘Indians’ themselves to express their
individuality. Any expression of individuality is frowned upon
equally by ‘Indians’ and people of other races. I have seen an
inward turn in many ‘Indian’ youth in which having expressed a
desire to be artists or musicians or weed smoking socialist humanists
exempts them from their race and exceptionalises them as
‘alternative’ or ‘other’ or worse, as coconuts.
It becomes easier
not to think, not to engage in debate, and ultimately it becomes easy
to live the unexamined life. To abandon striving toward humanism and
accept ready made identity. It also becomes easier to categorise and
racialise others, in fact the adherence to an archaic chaste system
among ‘Indians’ makes race essentialising easier. Everyone is
aware of their place in the hierarchy: the fairer one is the more
beautiful one is, it is not untrue that ‘bread ous’ Hindi and
Guajarati people are usually richer and fairer than the ‘porridge
ous’, people who are Tamil and Telegu and darker and poorer, who
find themselves at the bottom of this hierarchy. It is not uncommon
for people to be told to marry within their caste. This endless and
quite absurd stratification is practised openly despite the discovery
of more and more shockingly fair Tamil people and darker Hindi
people. Thus the complaint against racism from white people, as
important and legitimate as it is, must be self reflective. While I
hear almost every time I am in the company of ‘Indian’ people,
complaints of racism by white people, none of them make the necessary
link to the political, none of these conversations end in a call to
action. None of these conversations end in problematising white as
the standard, the anger and the bitterness is turned inward like the
attitudes. It is the filtering down of state made multicultural and
non-racial politics signified by our negotiated settlement.
The cementing over
of thousands of years of oppression, exploitation and racism in the
form of our rainbow nation is the ultimate white chauvinism. It is
not forgiveness that comes first, something the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission seems to have ingrained in the collective
South African conscious. It is anger, debate, dialogue, conversation,
understanding and then, finally, forgiveness: a wiping clean, a new
and fresh beginning. We have been robbed, all of us, of the chance
for real reconciliation, for real new beginnings. We have skipped
ahead, forgot the steps in between and have landed on shaky ground,
trying to build a foundation on sand. Thus charging ‘Indian’
people and white people and coloured people and ‘black’ African
people and any person with living the unexamined life is not a
negation of agency it is in fact an invitation to them, to take their
rightful place in the decolonisation process. We have all undergone
the colonisation process collectively but differently and this has
manifested in many different forms. For white people, theirs has been
the role of the superior in all things. Having also undergone the
process of colonisation themselves and having been duped into
thinking they are superior, they too must learn to become equals,
they too must start over and rethink their position. For ‘Indian’
people the process must equally be interrogated, for it requires a
decolonisation on both levels of superiority and inferiority.
If there is
something that we might take from Fanon in this regard it is that
there is no going back, that the dialectic must move forward, that
every moment and every event must propel it forward. We cannot return
to some imaginary society in which we reverse the evils created in
this one, we can however begin anew, rethink anything and everything.
Ato Sekyi Otu believes, this project of decolonisation required only
one thing: reinvention. Everything in our colonial and
Apartheid histories have been constructed through domination and
alienation. Thus what we need and what Fanon calls for is “to wipe
the slate clean”. Reinvention requires something further however,
it is requires sovereign and conscious beings, who utilise their
capacity for thought. It requires a reinsertion of politics into our
society, in all and every area of society; a conscious examining of
our lives so that we might be able to live amongst each other as
equals and more than that that we might finally and absolutely throw
off ridiculous categories like ‘Indian’. So that when I say I am
an “African” or I am a “black” South African, or I am an
“Indian” or I am “gay” it is merely a reference to a
political identity, it does not constrain me to my colour, or my race
or my sexual orientation, it is a choice to adopt a particular stance
in society to be actional so that we might be human. It is an
understanding that these identities are not ends in themselves but
merely points on an open dialectic so that in working towards the
prospect for a new humanity we know that it is always itself open to
reinvention by any of us and by all of us.
