Sisonke
Msimang, The Daily
Maverick
The violent
and public beating of non-violent black protesters at the University of Free
State demonstrated white Afrikaner impunity on full display. It was a reminder
of the continued ways in which white people’s violence in South Africa is a
tool that takes direct aim at black people’s bodies.
The violent
racist does not bother with acts of vandalism or bother with the destruction of
property: That would be a waste of time and energy. Over centuries the violence
has evolved into an efficient and highly effective machine. Kick the head and
wound the body. Send a clear message – no warning shots. There is nothing
symbolic about the violence whites have carried out in South Africa in the past
and on Tuesday we saw that it continues to be as literal as it ever was.
Most
importantly, what has become clear in the UFS incident is that public and
university responses to white violence and black violence continue to be marked
by stark differences. Black violence must be dealt with through increased
security, while white violence must be met with love and intense introspection.
The #Colourblind movement that has popped up illustrates this particularly
well.
Those who
call for prayer and reflection are driven by the idea that whites can be coaxed
out of violence through a change of heart, while blacks must be punished and
controlled when they are violent. This asymmetric analysis is at the core of
racist belief and ideology. Racism sees blacks as inferior, undifferentiated
and lawless. Racism sees whites as distinct, individual, rational. These
beliefs persist, in spite of evidence of white irrationality and anxiety, and
black discipline and self control.
Because it
is deep-seated and in some ways foundational, it operates both consciously and
sub-consciously, it shapes the responses of even the most thoughtful university
administrators. This is incredible, given how much South Africa has been
internationally recognised as a shining example of conflict resolution.
The
mediation experts and the leaders who lead us into the elections of 1994, are
either dead, tired or discredited. Indeed, the notion of democracy itself, or
rather this particular democracy that we founded twenty years ago, seems to be
on its knees.
It is clear
that we are at a moment of national crisis and that we do not have the
leadership – particularly amongst white South Africans - to adequately address
this situation. Yet even if we found the leaders, new and old, if they emerged
today and began to build a road to sanity and the kind of peace this country
has never known, they would need to understand how we got here.
Ironically,
one of most compelling and useful assessments of how we arrived at this place
was proffered on the very campus of UFS five and a half years ago. Professor
Mahmood Mamdani, one of the world’s foremost minds on issues of conflict and
transition wrote:
Had
the TRC acknowledged pass laws and forced removals as constituting the core
social violence of apartheid, as the stuff of extra-economic coercion and
primitive accumulation, it would have been in a position to imagine a
socio-economic order beyond a liberalized post-apartheid society. It would have
been able to highlight the question of justice in its fullness, as not only as
criminal and political, but also as social. The step the TRC failed to take is
the challenge South Africa faces today.
In the
absence of a series of profound and well-resourced post-TRC interventions aimed
at the question of justice, it has been left to South Africans to figure things
out on their own. Instead of acting responsibly, many whites have sought to
either deny that racism continues to be an organizing principle in our society,
or they have taken on a victim mentality.
Many white
students on South Africa’s troubled campuses fall into the former category.
They have had the appearance of being disorganized when in fact they have been
fairly uniform and organized in their attitudes and their approaches to racism.
When black students have protested, white students have generally complained
about being unable to continue to study or move freely around campus. It has been
easy to conclude that they are largely apolitical because they often speak in
seemingly naïve terms about the need to “move on” and not talk about politics
so much. They insist they don’t see colour. This sort of insistence is deeply
political, as are decisions to complain about being unable to park when fellow
students are hungry. When events like the rugby match occur, the cluelessness
of white youth is revealed for what it is. It quickly hardens. It moves with
lightning speed. Suddenly women are on their feet spurring on their men. They
are no longer benign, they are malevolent. Disruption must be met with
violence: swift, and crushing and absolute.
The language
of victimhood has gained serious traction amongst many whites in recent years.
This week it was out in its crudest form, as an image did the rounds on social
media using Sam Nzima’s iconic June 1976 photo of Hector Pieterson being
carried by Mbuyisa Makhubo. Underneath them was another photo, this one
with four burly white men. The comparison was breathtaking in its
offensiveness. Deeply telling of the lengths to which racism will go to
reinvent itself.
It is clear
now that the decision to focus on peace as the founding principle of our new
democracy was taken at the expense of justice. This is evident everywhere in
our society, not just on our campuses. Most South Africans should now be able
to accept that our country has been muddling through a superficial peace: for
the vast majority of South Africans, the last two decades have continued to
offer daily indignities.
The failure
to prioritize justice has left poor black people trapped in a
cycle of
poverty at the very same time that it has given white South Africans the
freedom to reinvent themselves. At some point in the last two decades whites
became the strongest victims in the world, and blacks – still poor, still
under-represented in every area of human endeavor that marks progress – have
become the oppressors.
James
Baldwin writes that, “invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles
under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.”
The whites
who depict themselves as latter day Hector Pietersons and who attack
peaceful protesters on this basis, have invented the past. They may not yet see
it yet, but at some stage violent black rage will no longer be aimed at
paintings and buildings and busses. Real blood has been spilled now. As it
always has in our history; the violence has been authored by whites. It is only
a matter of time before there are deaths.
