South Africa's new shame

South Africa, the country that was outcast by the international community for so many years because of its apartheid policies, has a new shame.

It is called xenophobia and this time it is not white people who are oppressing, displacing and killing blacks. It is black killing black. The only crime of the victims is that they are not originally from South Africa, but from other African countries.

A mere 14 years after South Africa ended its race-based policies, in terms of which the white minority dominated the black majority, black South Africans have been going on the rampage, killing close to 50 immigrants from other African countries and displacing thousands.

The violence, which started in South Africa’s richest province, Gauteng, quickly spread to other parts of the country this week.

Some victims have been burnt in the way alleged police informers were burnt in the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1980s. Scenes reminiscent of those years, when protesters brandishing all kinds of weapons confronted police in the streets, were played out in South Africa this week.

As far as we know, no Ghanaians have been victims of the violence in South Africa, but it seems like no immigrants from other African countries are safe in South Africa today.

Today they could be targeting Zimbabweans, Nigerians or Somalis. Tomorrow they could be targeting Ghanaians.

One prominent politician said it was “brother fighting against brother” in South Africa at the moment.

The irony is that many of the people who are being targeted moved to South Africa in search of a better life because of poverty or conflicts in their country, as is the case with Zimbabweans. Others merely wanted to join in the benefits that came from a liberated South Africa, which has one of the strongest economies in Africa.

Another irony is that, in the dark days of apartheid, when South Africa’s liberation movement fought a violent battle against the apartheid regime, many other African countries hosted the anti-apartheid freedom fighters.

The people from some of those countries, who are now in need of solidarity themselves, are being met by machete-wielding hordes who are chasing them out of the country, back to an uncertain future. That is if they are lucky to escape with their lives.

An even starker irony is that today (Sunday 25 May) the continent celebrates Africa Day or African Union Day, which is meant to celebrate what it means to be an African and the unity of Africans. The events in South Africa this week have soured these celebrations.

There have been all kinds of explanations offered by experts for what has been happening in South Africa. Ultimately, it comes down to South Africa’s black majority, who have been oppressed and exploited for so long, feeling that immigrants from other African countries are taking away their hard-earned economic gains.

This is, of course, not true as many African immigrants are in fact, through creating businesses, helping with job-creation in this country where the unemployment rate is as high as 50 percent in some areas.

No matter what the explanation, no one can forgive the wanton killing of innocent people who are merely trying to improve themselves and their families.

But as not all white South Africans were bad during the days of apartheid, not all black South Africans are bad today. There are many South Africans of all colours who are disgusted by the actions of their fellow citizens.

These people have been making their voices heard in protests throughout the country this week, but have also been helping at centres where displaced refugees find themselves.

The situation in South Africa today indicates the need for more education about what it means to be an African; about the need for tolerance and the need for all of us to live in harmony on this troubled yet beautiful continent.

We should allow a repeat of the violent attacks in South Africa, not anywhere on the continent. Events such as what happened in South Africa this week only serve to give our entire continent a bad name.

(First published in Sunday World in Accra, Ghana, where I was consulting editor in 2008)

Make Africa Day a public holiday

It is Monday 26 May 2008 in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and it is a public holiday. Yesterday was Africa Day, a day that still goes relatively unrecognised in South Africa, and because it was Sunday, the Monday becomes a holiday.

The streets are noticeably less busy, the market is relatively quieter.

Maybe that is one of the problems with South Africa, I find myself thinking, that we don’t see ourselves as part of the African continent and we don’t even see the need to celebrate Africa Day.

Maybe therein lays the opportunity to deal with the wave of xenophobia that has gripped our nation.

Maybe we should make Africa Day a public holiday in South Africa. Maybe then we would be able to focus on its significance. Maybe we could then use the opportunity to start a discussion about what it means to be an African and the need for unity across the African continent.

Maybe we will then be able to deal with the arrogance displayed by so many South Africans who believe that we are better than our brothers and sisters elsewhere on the continent.

Like so many other South Africans, I have been searching, albeit from afar, for reasons behind the xenophobia that erupted this week. I have also been thinking about how one avoids this happening again.

Unlike most of my colleagues in the media, I was not surprised by the attacks. Shocked yes, but not surprised. If one looks at how black South Africans have been fighting for such a small piece of South Africa’s economic pie and how they have even been trying to exclude fellow black South Africans from access to this economic pie, then I am not surprised.

If we feel that certain South African groups should not benefit from our economy, then why should we agree that foreigners should benefit.

So I have been shocked by the manner of the attacks and its violent nature. I was not surprised that the attacks happened at all.

I found myself asking why we are such a violent nation. I tried to link this to poverty, but as a Ghanaian journalist pointed out to me last week: “We have more poverty in Ghana, but we do not have as much crime.”

I then found myself blaming apartheid and the way it dehumanised our people, not only the atrocities committed by the apartheid regime and its foot soldiers, but also the atrocities committed in the name of the liberation struggle.

It is probably easier to kill somebody if you tell yourself that you are not killing a human being; you are killing something below a human being.

This brings me back to Africa Day and the need for us to celebrate it as South Africans.

For so many years, we were not part of Africa. Most African countries knowingly and willingly excommunicated the white apartheid regime, and with good reason.

We have only really being made to feel part of Africa for the past 14 years, since we became a democracy.

You still find South Africans would rather travel to Europe or the United States, but not to other African countries. Yes, there is poverty in Africa, but there is also incredible beauty. It is time for South Africans to open up their eyes to the beauty on the continent.

We should actively celebrate Africa Day and being part of Africa. If it requires that our government should decree a public holiday to celebrate Africa, then I would support it.

The message it would send to the rest of the continent is that we are serious about taking our rightful place on the continent. We are serious about being Africans.

Maybe by doing that, we would then be able to start addressing the issues that led to the xenophobia of the past week or so.

(First published on the Mail and Guardian's Thoughtleader site in May 2008)

All of us are racists

Race is not a subject that South Africans talk about easily and readily, and I think that this particularly the case with white South Africans.

The other day I was presenting a lecture on race at what used to be known as Pentech but now is known as the Bellville campus of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). Most of the students in class were generically black, with only three white students in class.

We had what I thought was a good discussion, but I noticed that the white students did not say anything.

Afterwards I was walking to my car and the white students walked in front of me, unaware that I was behind them. One of the white students, a young woman, said to her friends: “I am sick and tired of race. I am sick and tired of people complaining about race. I have also been discriminated against, but you don’t find me complaining.”

I wished that she had said those words in class and then we could have addressed her concerns.

However, she was doing what most of us do in South Africa today: we only speak our minds to people who look like us. As soon as somebody who looks a little bit different joins the conversation, then we change the subject or we review, in our minds, what we want to say.

I have a simple policy: I do not believe in saying behind your back what I will not say in front of you. This means that if I have something uncomfortable to say about you, I would much rather say it to you then behind your back.

Of course, most people are not like that. They harbour feelings about people who are different to them and never let those people know how they really feel.

This is probably why we have not properly dealt with the issues of race and racism in this country. We are too scared to tell each other how we really feel about each other.

When I started writing my book, Race, I thought about the approach that I would use and I realised that if I wanted be effective in dealing with the issues of race and racism, then I would have to deal with the fact that all of us are racists.

But I would not be able to call other people racist without admitting to my own racism. So I start off the book with an admission of guilt, so to say. In the introduction, I say that I am a racist and that most South Africans are probably racists. I then outline how our racist history has groomed all of us to become racists.

It is a long introduction and the following is just a small excerpt:

But if I am a racist, I am not a passive acceptor of my racism. I am prepared to admit to my racism and I am doing my best to fight against it. Like the people in Alcoholics Anonymous, I believe that it is important to admit to one’s faults, in this case racism, before one starts to deal with them.

Failure to admit to one’s faults will mean that one will probably die with those faults.

The difference between me and the people who are not prepared to admit to their racism is that I will probably overcome my racism at some point in my life. The people who are not prepared to admit their racism will probably remain racists until the day they die.

I realised that I had to take this step, make this confession, to create a comfort zone for people to begin a conversation about race and, in some ways, to reclaim the term “racist”, a term that has too often been used as an intimidating, threatening and abusive weapon.

You cannot have a conversation if one party is threatening and intimidating the other. However, you can have a conversation if both parties are prepared to admit to some faults.

I saw how effective this approach could be in my interactions, particularly with white people. Whenever I have admitted to my racism, they have also been prepared to admit to theirs. And then we were able to have a conversation about why we were all racists.

At a Centre for Conflict Resolution event in Cape Town the other day, one of the members of the audience asked me why I thought it necessary to create a safe space for whites to engage in this debate, bearing in mind that whites have oppressed us blacks and benefited so much from apartheid.

I agreed that whites have benefited from apartheid and were the oppressors under apartheid, but we cannot have a discussion about race in post-apartheid South Africa and exclude whites from this conversation.

And I believe that whites will not join this conversation unless we create a safe environment for them to join in.

If we continue to accuse and intimidate them, because of their racist past, then they will just retreat into their laager and sulk.

In the locker room of the gym the other day, I heard two young white men talking about BEE and lamenting the proposed exclusion of white women from disadvantaged groups under employment-equity targets. The one said: “I am just going to stay in South Africa until 2010, make as much money as possible and then leave. I can’t continue to live in this country.”

I decided not to confront them in the gym locker room, but this is precisely why we need to talk.

There are too many misperceptions out there, not only among white people, and those misperceptions will continue to influence the way we interact with each other.

If we don’t deal with it now, race will continue to haunt our society for many generations to come. And what better way to start the conversation by admitting that all of us are racists?

(This first appeared on the Mail and Guardian Thoughtleader site in October 2007)

Omar's death, burial evoke contradictions

WHAT happens when a humble man dies? What happens when that man was a cabinet minister in South Africa? What happens if that man was a Muslim?

This was the dilemma faced by the organisers of the funeral of Transport Minister and former justice minister Abdullah Mohammed Omar, who died at a Constantia clinic just after 4 o'clock yesterday morning.

Muslim custom dictates that a person should be buried by sunset on the day of his death, unless he dies too late into the day.

This posed all kinds of problems for people who felt that Omar deserved to have a proper funeral; and for others who felt that, because he was a cabinet minister, he deserved a state funeral.

Within three hours of his death, at 7 am, a hastily put together committee was ready to release details of Omar's funeral. There would be a final greeting at his home in Rylands Estate, as is customary in Muslim culture, followed by a public service at the Vygieskraal Stadium, about 1km from Omar's house.

Ebrahim Rasool, the ANC leader in the Western Cape and the "programme director" at the funeral, explained that this was no ordinary funeral.

"Comrade Dullah was a Muslim, so we are following all the procedures according to the Shariah (Muslim customary law). But Dullah was also a leader of the people and needs to be buried in a proper way. However, Dullah also told us before he died that he wanted to be buried in a humble way. He did not want any pomp and ceremony.

"This is why," Rasool said, "we have walked all the way from the house and Dullah will be buried in a kafaan (Muslim coffin), as any other Muslim would be buried."

Rasool pointed out that President Thabo Mbeki had also walked the distance from Omar's house to the stadium.

Mbeki and his deputy, Jacob Zuma, were at the head of the pallbearers carrying the bier into the stadium.

The tension between the three Dullah Omars (the statesman, the Muslim and the humble person) was felt as the coffin entered the stadium. It is customary for Muslims to share the load and many people had to be prevented from joining in the carrying because the president, his deputy and a host of cabinet ministers were carrying at the time.

In Muslim culture there is no such thing as official pallbearers; all able-bodied men assist in carrying the bier.

There were other tensions. For instance, there were two marquees for very important people. With Muslim funerals there is not normally a VIP tent. Also, because it is customary at Muslim funerals for men and women to be separated, the male and female VIPs had to sit in separate marquees.

But despite these tensions, the funeral was a special occasion with the correct blend of "pomp and ceremony" and humility as requested by Dullah Omar.

Apart from the president, his deputy and almost the entire cabinet, just about anybody who was anybody in South African politics was there, including former president Nelson Mandela, a few of the premiers from all over South Africa, members of parliament, members of provincial legislatures and MECs.

Albertina Sisulu got an honourable mention from ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe, as did former ANC Women's League president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Among those not mentioned and who were not in the VIP area were former ANC Western Cape leader and disgraced cleric Allan Boesak and former ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni.

Rivonia trialists Ahmed Kathrada and Andrew Mlangeni were among the many dignitaries at the funeral.

As is expected at a funeral of this nature, many promises were made. Among these were that "we will not let Comrade Dullah's memory die" (Motlanthe), and "we commit ourselves never to do anything of which he would be ashamed" (Mbeki).

The funeral went some way towards meeting both those promises.

It was a fitting tribute to a man who carried on living in his own house despite becoming a cabinet minister and who, in Mbeki's words, "never sought to appear in television or the newspapers". 

(First published in City Press on Sunday 14 March 2004)