Many South Africans had never heard of DASO (the Democratic Alliance Student Organisation). For one thing, they have not trended on Twitter before. They run such civic minded campaigns as getting more people to donate blood, scrapping VAT on textbooks, switching off lights at earth hour, and supporting the DA Youth to cut down dense foliage in high crime spots. Then last week in the current round of Student Representative Council elections, "that poster", featuring a photo sourced from the internet of a nude (from the waist up) and apparently heterosexual couple embracing went viral and hit almost every news outlet.
Compliments are in order to the design team - not for the design mind you - but for getting their campaign off campus. Whether it will win any elections is another matter entirely. One has to like their motivational idealism, their youthful audacity, and make allowance for their gaucheness in choosing a rather inappropriate if unimaginative illustration for their concept - "in OUR future you wouldn't look twice". Oops, I forgot to mention that the male has an ivory skin and the female ebony. (In this photo-shopped presentation of humankind, ebony and ivory seem more accurate adjectives than black and white.)
The models are - well professional models - sensual, groomed, airbrushed, with the kind of skins that cost a fortune to maintain. DASO could have come up with something or at least people a little more real than magazine culture. The Immorality Act was scrapped well before apartheid finally ended, but in South Africa's political ethos, the DA youth are young conservatives. (If we are really to imagine the future, perhaps the male should have been Chinese.)
Since sex is something commoditized to sell everything, why shouldn't our budding young capitalists try it out for votes?
The first reaction of many, including this author, was what is the fuss about? But this is South African politics. Officials of the ANC, COSATU, and other parties felt it necessary to issue reactions.
Even though no nipples are visible, the prudes and some religious folk had the quickest reaction time. They didn't like the idea of photos of half-naked people plastered around campuses. One wonders if they object to photos of Gandhi. A surprising number thought it pornographic; in which case they must spend much of their life aroused or averting their eyes. At least one person even suggested it might encourage rape. The ideological prudes were even more absurd; one commentator seeing the poster as promoting relationships for which society isn't ready.
As a political poster commentary was a free for all and much of it predictably ridiculous.
Umbrage was taken by political opponents in the usual knee-jerk reaction to anything the DA attempts. Whatever they do, the race card will be played by their opponents. This demonization is beginning to wear thin, as successive electoral gains prove. Though admittedly the ANC is much better at losing elections (through their venality and incompetence) than the DA are at winning them.
Next up were the ideologues. That the male was ivory was seen as entrenching white supremacy. Such ideological criticism should be carefully made, for it is just one step short of disparaging or even stigmatising loving relationships by real life couples. The logical flaw in such rebukes is that there is no reason not to assume that the slogan "wouldn't look twice" applies not only to race, but also gender as a social construct, depicted in the poster.
Finally, the poster people faced a racist backlash from a section of backward, right-wing conservatives.
What is clear is that race is still a stormy, irrational, divisive issue in the country. How could it not be?
In a recent piece I wrote on Thought Leader I explained why I refused to answer the population group question in the 2011 Census.
The negative comments it provoked hinged on two assumptions: Advocates of non-racialism are trying to deny racism and not just race. Secondly, by implication, it is feared that such advocates wish to do away with affirmative action.
Neither charge is logically valid, though they may be true of certain advocates of non-racial thinking.
Taking a stance of non-racialism is a matter of principle, and principles - such as human rights - take precedence over ideology. Principles matter most when they are most tested.
On the question of affirmative action a primarily class-based system which secondly takes into account race as a social structure and how it has been applied seems a far more preferable system than continuing to classify people according to their skin colour. It may even accomplish redress faster and it will not leave the country with a lingering legacy of racial thinking, the ugliness of which DASO has revealed.
Brent Meersman is the author of Reports Before Daybreak and Primary Coloured.
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