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| Nikiwe Bikitsha |
Nikiwe Bikitsha, Mail & Gaurdian
The
academic and political commentator Steven Friedman wrote a very compelling
piece that appeared on the South African Civil Society Information Service
website last week, with the pithy title, “The real ticking time bomb is the
black middle class”.
It
was a prescient analysis of an anger that I experience, see and feel, and often
am unable to articulate; I fail to grasp its genesis fully. It is an anger
playing itself out with ever-greater frequency and in more visceral tones in
the social media.
Among
the many reasons Friedman believes the black middle class is a time bomb is
this: “Black professionals and business people may live vastly better than
previous generations but face the same racial attitudes and sense of exclusion,
even if the process is now subtler.”
Everywhere
one goes, there are constant reminders that not enough has changed over the
past 20 years. This realisation strikes me at the oddest moments. A few weeks
ago, while attending a corporate function, I stayed at a luxurious hotel in the
Cape winelands.
As
I looked over the breathtaking, pristine vineyards, I was filled with anger. On
a visit to Wonderkop near Marikana two weeks ago, I despaired when I saw the
workers’ living quarters and watched as families of the striking miners queued
for food from a soup kitchen. Their demand for better wages had dragged on for
five months by then and they were suffering and hungry.
At
other times, it’s more overt. Take the recent statement attributed to the South
African Institute of Race Relations last week, which said that affirmative
action was to blame for the death of three babies in North West. The babies had
died after drinking contaminated tap water.
The
institute’s Frans Cronje’s logic is that “there is no doubt that the officials
responsible for these deaths were appointed, at least in part, on the grounds
of race-based affirmative action and that a direct causal link therefore exists
between the policy and the deaths”.
Red-hot
flames are shooting out of my ears. It seems impossible to have a rational
discussion about affirmative action and transformation in South Africa.
What
has happened – and the reason we seem to go around and around in the same
vicious circle – is that there are those who have sought to capture and distort
the narrative to suit their own narrow ends.
It
speaks of an unfortunate and desperate agitation to retain past privilege.
The
distorted and widely disseminated view, in some circles, is that competence is
anathema to black professionals and is the preserve of whites alone.
It
suggests and propagates the idea that merit and affirmative action are mutually
exclusive – that black people are necessarily inferior to their white
counterparts when it comes to certain tasks. This is racist.
The
lie is repeated so often that it is the presumption or subtext of many debates
about the lack of transformation, whether in the boardroom or on the sports
fields. It is a deliberate attempt to delegitimise and demonise a law that is
not only just and fair but also necessary.
Affirmative
action does not demand that we appoint incompetent people. It says blacks and
women, who were disadvantaged by apartheid laws, must be given preference over
white male candidates.
It
also says black people and women should be promoted so that the senior levels
of their relevant organisations reflect the demographic make-up of our country.
The
rationale lies in the past, when whites occupied those positions not just
because they were competent but also because they were white. Black people were
excluded. It’s not complicated.
The
proponents of these warped and revisionist views of affirmative action also
tend to be the first to argue that we should not talk about the past.
There,
too, they are wrong. Such an attitude reflects a deeply held and infuriating
obliviousness and ambivalence about the reasons why social re-engineering and
legislative tools are necessary and must continue to be deployed to change our
country.
Economic
power still rests in the hands of a minority; we cannot expect to break that
stranglehold when people are deliberately and mischievously led to believe that
being black means incompetence.
Where
there are shortcomings with the legislation, or poor appointments are made,
certainly call those out – and stipulate what those problems are.
But
let’s not make incendiary blanket statements.
Affirmative
action is not aimed at punishing whites or killing babies. It is about ensuring
that there is equality and justice.
