A RESPONSE TO GILLIAN SCHUTTE'S
'MANDELA DAY'
I find Ms Schutte's article confused
and confusing.
True, Mandela has been subjected to
hagiography and reinvention. All important historical figures
worldwide suffer in this way. Gandhi, Kennedy, Martin Luther King are
all examples. Some do well out of it and some not. None of them will
escape criticism forever or keep their reputations intact.
Time and historical research will
rebalance and reassess Mandela's contribution and there will always
be arguments about his value. That's good. Remember too, that Mandela
was turned into a brand and a money-making legacy on his death bed.
He was denied dignity as his life ended so others could make
political capital from him and this was done by his immediate family
and by senior politicians, none of whom were white. This behaviour
may be reprehensible but it is also human. Human behaviour is human
behaviour – not white or black behaviour.
It is true that black leaders
throughout post -colonial Africa have been given an unjustifiably bad
press from the West. Nevertheless leaders will always be criticised
and deserve to be criticised because they will all inevitably make
mistakes and sometimes prove corruptible. Mandela and Gandhi
included. What is needed is for people to be well-informed and not
leap to defend or decry any leader because of the colour of his skin
or his culture or traditions or religion. Leaders ought to be judged
by the egalitarian way they fulfil the constitution of their country.
Ms Schutte's anger is directed
against rich privileged whites and neocolonialism. Justifiable?
Useful? Relevant to the South African situation? One might ask how
helpful is her polemic in effecting change for the better for those
she advocates for – the poor black folk who lack agency. After all
there is a new colonial power searching for mines and farms in
Africa. It's emissaries are relatively poor Chinese workers.
Everything will change.
Ms Schutte talks about the 'dominant
discourse' but what does she mean exactly? I take it, and I apologise
if I am wrong,that she means to identify those who hold power and
have control of society but she uses this term rather broadly. Is she
talking about the global dominant discourse or specifically the
dominant discourse in South Africa? They should not be conflated even
where they impact on each other.
Ms Schutte quotes Richard Dyer's
book 'White'. I haven't read it but it sounds interesting.
He is talking she says, about the construction of Western imperialism
in the 18th and 19th centuries which was
undeniably built upon racism and the slave trade. Does his analysis
fit today's situation as well?
Global power and wealth has changed
and is concentrated in a few giant corporations who are controlled
by a small number of individuals. This may be disturbing and
frightening but how white is this concentrated power and is the
selection of the powerful based on race and wealth or just wealth? In
the present mix of global power are there not also people from the
Middle East, the Far East, Russia, China and Latin America? If there
is one dominant group its not static but changing all the time
especially with regard to race and culture.
Power today may in fact be
'colour-blind'. I wonder if Ms Schutte isn't directing her energy at
a moving and changing target and doing her cause far more harm than
good by indicting 'whiteness' as if it is the main and only cause?
According to Dyer 'whiteness' is not located inside the physical body
and therefore can be an attribute of people whose skins aren't white.
Schutte though, returns to the surface colour of people to make her
point. She is rather selective with facts and analysis which weakens the validity of
her argument.
The dominant power/discourse today
probably doesn't care about race or the colour of anybody's skin. It
may also be unconcerned if ordinary folk regardless of their colour,
hate and kill each other because they are black against white, Sunni
against Shiite, Catholic against Protestant, fundamentalist against
free-thinker. By identifying the enemy primarily as white Schutte
could be unintentionally arming racism and racists and losing
potential allies because they have white skins.
I have seen very unpleasant examples
of extreme white racism among some white Africans but isn't this a
small group who are noisily vociferous when provoked? Attacking this
group might make them implode in fury damaging the innocent when
they do. Better to take the oxygen of angry attention away from them.
My guess is that most whites are ashamed of apartheid and racism but
if they are made to feel guilty about it they will become reluctant to adapt.
That's human too. Learning how to live together can't be done through
blame and humiliation. That was how apartheid managed and enforced
separation.
Racism is not exclusive to pale
people in any case. All people were damaged by apartheid. Racism,
nationalism, chauvinism and tribalism start from the personal and
they have to be understood and defeated there. People of all
gradations of colour need to do this. Providing education and
information gives the power to ordinary people to make up their own
minds and change their own prejudices. I doubt that Ms Schutte's
tactic of haranguing one group of South Africans in her article
entitled 'Dear White People' was effective in changing attitudes.
Those who approved of it were already in agreement. To change the
minds of people you have to first show them respect even when you
disagree with them. Mandela understood that.
At the moment there may be more
well-off white people in South Africa hanging on to any vestiges of
privilege they can than there are well-off black people who feel
threatened by the poverty around them. Its possible that both groups
might together form a new South African elite that disregards the
poor. How do you change that for the better? Not by reducing people
to their surface colour but by understanding their fears and their
aspirations.
Can the case for change be made
without referring to skin colour?
