NEWS & ANALYSIS

Is our democracy founded on lies?

Dinga Nkhwashu says we've ended up with a system that guarantees white privilege

IS THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEMOCRACY FOUNDED ON LIES?

In the past few weeks two seemingly "harmless" and unrelated occurrences took place: the so called complaint against Chief Justice Mogoeng to the JSC by one Paul Hoffman and the anti-competitive complaint by Advocate Simba Chitando against some Cape Town based white law firms and advocates.

Paul Hoffman runs an outfit calling itself the Institute of Accountability in Southern Africa. If the other people listed on the Institute's website are aware of their membership, they are not very active. According to its website its purpose is to "make accountability matter" and its mission is to "hold leaders of the region accountable for respecting, protecting, promoting and fulfilling the rights of the people".

On the other hand Chief Justice Mogoeng is the respondent and the native who dared to speak about the continuing injustices faced by blacks in this country and questioned the current economic power relations between blacks and white. You would think this "token" and "undeserving" Chief Justice would know his place in the food chain and not dare to raise this critical issue. For his troubles and for being a "pliable" and "token" Zuma ally, he had to pay, one way or the other.

The Hoffman-Mogoeng incident and the Adv. Chitando complaint are symptoms of a bigger race relations problem. Unfortunately South African democracy is too romanticized to a point where we would rather pretend that what we have is a miracle and that we are a "rainbow" nation. In this article I seek to trace the origins of this notion that blacks and whites in this country will, by stroke of pen, suddenly live in harmony because it was said, somewhere in 1994, that apartheid is dead.

It is my argument that until and unless we confront the truth about how we came to be where we are today, we run a very huge risk of perpetuating (as we are doing everyday) apartheid and the continued exclusion of the majority of blacks from enjoying what we call the spoils of democracy. It is almost beyond common sense that every house is as strong as its foundation. This analogy applies equally to the current situation in South Africa.

The majority of black people have not really been told the truth about this current system, where their leaders have replaced apartheid practitioners and proponents in the Union Buildings without any real and meaningful change in the power relations. It is argued at times, rather patronizingly, that blacks should be grateful for the peep they get to make into the real economy and therefore should thank the South African "miracle" that this constitutional democracy is and their liberators.

Proceeding from the assumption (tacit or implied) that people have been liberated we have continued (most specially in the ANC) to feed people fallacious stories of how we defeated apartheid. The language that is used to whip up this romanticized and patriotic feeling of "victory" is by its nature the language of war as if there was a war that we won. The contrary is the truth and it is this false and convenient fallacy that I seek to challenge.

How did we come to be here?

A group of so called "eminent" Afrikaners (some of whom were members of the Broederbond) and some white businessman, suffocating under the sanctions and the toxic atmosphere of apartheid, with the support and active participation and facilitation of Niel Barnard and his National Intelligence Services started a process to engage with the ANC as the dominant black liberation movement. They needed funding and other logistical support.

Enter the British domiciled Consolidated Goldfields ("Consgold") whose mining interests in South Africa was suffering under the weight of sanctions with a lot of cash and facilities in London to bankroll the project. The talks starts but are mainly based on a divide and rule strategy: there are parallel negotiations with Nelson Mandela in prison and the exiled group of Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and others.

P.W Botha does not show signs of firm commitment and a "parliamentary" coup is engineered and he is replaced by one FW De Klerk. De Klerk gets informed of the secret talks and he seizes the moment. Not to miss an opportunity to outwit Mandela he then goes on to release him from prison without first informing or consulting him of the precise arrangements. Fast forward and Mandela reads his first speech as a free man wearing borrowed feminine glasses.

To cut a long story short the scene is set for a negotiation process that led to the current situation where whites are guaranteed their privileges that they enjoyed under apartheid. The only change is that now there are no longer any sanctions so they get to economically integrate into the global economy, make international economic alliances and also feed on the newly "powerful" black man's self doubt on issues of governance and leadership.

Enter warped and established capital friendly policies like BEE. Top it up by a constitution that protects, guarantees and enforces the status quo. Sprinkle a few black faces here and there through so-called BEE deals, affirmative action appointments to the judiciary etc., then you have paradise. With a stroke of pen whites and blacks are now equal in every respect and blacks are "unofficially" forbidden from challenging the status quo.

To ensure that this "restriction or embargo" on challenging the system is enforced, a few "prominent" blacks are stationed as ceremonious heads of traditional white institutions and organizations, whose primary role is to defend white privilege. Some get co-opted into "senior" positions in big companies, with the dominant criteria for the co-option the proximity to ANC leadership so that they can help legitimize and protect the privileges inherited from the apartheid past.

Now you have the rainbow nation!

It takes incidents like the Hoffman-Mogoeng and Chitando sagas to remind the so-called clever blacks that it is not yet uhuru. For these two blacks (Mogoeng and Chitando) are now seeking to deviate from the script and forgot their place. Organizations like Hoffman's Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa and similar organizations sees it as their patriotic duty to remind them of their place,

It is not these actual acts of putting blacks in their places that necessitate that South Africa wake up from this fallacious dream of equality between blacks and whites. It is a more serious and scary consideration. The consideration being that one day black people of this country will awaken to the reality that this democracy was only designed to benefit and perpetuate white privilege and that as far as they are concerned it is nothing but a notion founded on a lie that holds the scariest prospect.

The writer is a member of the African National Congress and he writes in his personal capacity.

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