Why Race Still Matters

When the pioneers of the new, democratic South Africa combined as one national holiday the African and Afrikaner commemorations observed on December 16, they expressed great hope for our country’s future.

The former Afrikaner holiday of the Day of the Vow and the anniversary of the founding of the African National Congress’ military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, became the Day of Reconciliation. Two martial remembrances were set aside to bring peace to the disparate people of the nation.

The intervening two decades have shown some progress. In some pockets of South Africa, the process of reconciliation, which is ongoing, has shown encouraging results.

Especially in urban areas, racial mixing is becoming increasingly normal; interracial marriage no longer is a novelty. In interpersonal relations, South Africans have shown that the ideal of non-racialism can exist.

But this should not fool us into believing that all is well. The national reconciliation project is at risk of failing, and not only because populists like Julius Malema have written off the Rainbow Nation.

Mr Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, in a speech last month attacked the efforts of reconciliation led by Nelson Mandela in the 1990s. It articulated for many black South Africans that the reconciliation project has failed them because it did not fulfil its implicit promise of transformation.

It does not require the historical illiterate polemic of Mr Malema to acknowledge that reconciliation and compromise have not produced transformation in the lives of the majority. Privilege remains the preserve mostly of whites; poverty mostly that of blacks.

While it is true that there is a growing black middle class and a small black elite, most of the country’s wealth remains white. It therefore does not sit well with many black Africans when whites are claiming victimhood over Black Economic Empowerment and affirmative action, even if the implementation of these policies often is iniquitous and unfair.

Black South Africans indicated their willingness to reconcile in 1994. This shouldn’t have been taken for granted. But for many white South Africans, the act of “surrendering” political power seemed to be the quid pro quo, bringing closure to the country’s past. That wasn’t the idea.

Few white people acknowledge without qualification that the inequalities created by apartheid and the racist policies that preceded it for almost three centuries had entrenched their privileges and the poverty of the majority, and that this invests in them certain responsibilities.

To many black people, the change in the exterior has not been matched by a change of heart. This is one reason why increasing numbers of black Africans express disillusionment with the reconciliation project. There is some truth to the perception that fundamentally white attitudes have not changed.

It’s the attitude of racial superiority which blames the government’s failures on race, in a language that still speaks of “us” and “them”.

It’s the lack of contrition for apartheid which should find expression not in ceaseless apologies but in the honest acknowledgment that white privilege remains entrenched thanks to the legacy of centuries of racist policies.

It’s the sense of entitlement that is implicit in white claims of victimhood by well-fed middle-class people.

It’s the self-defensive, affronted responses that are being formulated when these issues are raised.

The school of Malema is a consequence of too many white people thinking that their hands were washed clean of apartheid when they consented to the transfer of political power in 1994 without also being willing to participate in transformation.

Of course, these white attitudes are not the only cause for the crisis in our reconciliation project. The ruling African National Congress has allowed a culture of incompetence and kleptocracy to become the public face of black empowerment.

The ANC’s failure in effecting real transformation — beyond the trivialities of sporting quotas and the enrichment of an elite — and its resort to blaming “counter-revolutionary whites” for it, is another chief cause for South Africa’s failure to achieve true national unity.

Many South Africans have shown that it is possible to live and work together regardless of race. But race will become truly insignificant in our land only when there has been a true transformation, of lives and of hearts, across the nation.