An edited version of this post, How whites can reconcile, appeared in City Press in July - you can view it here.
Many excellent pieces of introspection and reflection have
been written recently, and it is about time. We haven’t done enough introspection
to date in South Africa, and this is especially true among white people. We are
a nation emerging from a mass tragedy – much like the Germans after World War
II – and yet too few white South Africans have ever questioned their complicity
in the atrocities committed, or how we can play a part in rebuilding our
country. Too many have just coasted
along since 1994 and expected the country to ‘move on’, without realising how
much we have to work on ourselves to build a new nation.
Being White in South
Africa
I did not grow up feeling white. I don’t come from a particularly
racialised home, nor were my parents political. My family all voted Progressive
and my aunt was arrested once or twice for protesting against Apartheid when
she was at Wits, but they were by no means a revolutionary family.
As soon as I could piece together what had happened in South
Africa (I was ten in 1994) I became truly disgusted by white South Africa. I was
angry that the older white people I knew had not been more active in opposing
it, and I wanted no part of white society – and have, to this day, prickled
with irritation if white people assume I share some sort of solidarity with
them.
Luckily for me, it was the Golden Age of Mandela and South
Africa was bursting with excitement. As a new nation, we were getting to know
one another. I had black friends at school, and new realms of popular culture were
opening up to me. I listened to Yfm and bought Miriam Makeba CDs. I felt proud
of my country watching as every year there were more wealthy, successful black
people in our malls and on our TVs.
Throughout my teenage years and early twenties the Rainbow
Nation was fully real to me. I felt like “my culture” was a composite of the
previously disparate cultures of SA – and “my people” was South Africans. There
was no ‘us’ and ‘them’ – and if there was, it was between the young, integrated
generation with which I identified and the older, conservative, divided
racists.
It has only recently become clear to me just how much of my
self-esteem derived from being accepted by black people. I needed that acceptance
to give me a sense of belonging, to legitimise my identity as a proud citizen
of a non-racial new South Africa. It was an acceptance that I felt among young
people, but also an acceptance that I took for granted.
And recently, I feel like that acceptance is being
withdrawn. South Africa, more and more, wants to define me as white.
Here is why: not enough white South Africans have put in the
work required. Not enough white people have genuinely committed themselves to
this new nation of ours or grasped just how different it needs to be from where
we come from. Too many seem to think the change has already happened; that the
political transition is over, so can’t everyone just get on with things? They
feel the pressure is off, when in fact the pressure is only now starting to
build.
Here is the thing that white people need to understand:
Apartheid was that bad. It was a
ruthless, evil, cold and dehumanising system of structural oppression,
deprivation and violence. People were tortured, people lost their homes, people
had their salaries capped at near starvation levels and people were subjected
to an education system designed to enslave them.
It was not, as FW de Klerk is so fond of saying, just a
failed experiment in separate development. That was never the intention and it
blows my mind that anyone can buy into that hogwash.
It will take decades to recover from Apartheid and get to a
point where every child has equal opportunities in South Africa. The status quo
is still completely unacceptable. Our Constitution envisages the sustainable
and equitable transformation of society based on socio-economic rights, and we
should all be anxious to accelerate that process or risk being derailed by
radicals who are also, rightly, unimpressed with the pace of change but whose
solutions will only make things worse.
Apartheid was also – and here is another penny that needs to
drop – psychologically damaging for white people. White South Africans are
psychologically damaged. We need to acknowledge this in order to move on. Apartheid
desensitised white South Africans to human suffering and filled most of them
with an unthinking sense of superiority and fear.
Perhaps most damaging of all, Apartheid blinded white South
Africans to the enormous privilege they enjoy. The result is the bizarre
situation we now find ourselves in, in which many white people are enormously
privileged while simultaneously feeling marginalised and put upon.
I saw an exacerbated comment on twitter the other day about
reconciliation in South Africa from a white guy who said: “Why are we still
talking about this? Haven’t we done enough?”
No, we haven’t.
We haven’t all become fluent in the indigenous languages of
our home country. Worse, some will judge a black South African’s intelligence
purely on his or her accent in English, and completely overlook the humbling
and impressive multilingualism of so many black South Africans.
We haven’t yet learnt to listen to differing points of view
before trying to ram what we think down people’s throats. But we demand to be
listened to ourselves.
Most of us don’t yet even notice, let alone feel
uncomfortable, when there are only white people in a boardroom or in an advert
or in a restaurant. But I know many who would leave a club if it were ‘too
black’.
In short, we haven’t yet freed ourselves from the blindness
of privilege and the last vestiges of subtle racism.
The consensus is emerging to call this paradigm ‘whiteness’.
I dislike the name because generalisations are never true and seldom useful. They
almost always lead to prejudice. “Whiteness” does not afflict all white people,
and nor do I think there is anything inherently
white about it – it crops up in various parts of the world at various points in
history. It just so happens that in South Africa, at this point in time, it is
a paradigm typical to many white people. Name aside, the phenomenon is real. It
is a disconnected, insensitive sense of arrogance and lack of self-awareness.
Think of how many people rant about affirmative action
without considering just how many more opportunities they had before they got
to that job interview than the other guy had. As children, they almost
certainly had more books at home, never went hungry, and attended better
schools. They were also probably more likely to have been given a leg up. If
it’s not what you know, but who you know that matters, then white South
Africans are already at an advantage in terms of economic inclusion. And how many
will actively try to hire from outside their social circle and expand
opportunities to previously marginalised people?
Think of how many will speak about ‘their tax money’ as if
they should have more say in government because they have more money, implying
those without money are somehow lazy and not, in fact, suffering from decades
of Apartheid’s deliberate restriction of skills and asset accumulation.
South Africa is angry at the moment and many are giving up
on the reconciliation project. This upsets me because I think we could be an
amazing country, and it frightens me because things will get very ugly if we
give up on ourselves.
White South Africans have an important role to play in
dissipating that anger. We need to genuinely commit to being part of the
transformation of South African society, and to realise that transformation is
as much about transforming ourselves as it is about numbers or demographics. It
is not what other people must do; it is what every single one of us must do.
The real work of building a new South Africa is less in the grand, national government
programmes and more in the hundreds of interactions and tiny decisions we make each
day.
The real work is in becoming conscious.
