Reconciliation In South Africa: A White Man’s Medicine?
Reconciliation In South Africa: A White Man’s Medicine?
“The white man wants the world; He wants it for himself alone. He finds himself predestined master of this world. He enslaves it” ~ Franz Fanon
My diagnosis is that reconciliation in South Africa is a white man’s medicine which has hurt rather than healed the nation, even if this was never the intent. Harsh? Perhaps. But for me, the prescription of non-racialism, in a society torn apart by the brutal hand of apartheid and colonialism, is no cure at all.
For as long as we sugar-coat and treat the trauma of South Africa, with placebos, the nation will remain a casualty of apartheid and colonialism. While we are love-sick with the philosophy and practice of reconciliation-without-justice, true liberation in South Africa will be still-born. Until whiteness no longer dominates and dictates, we will not be a free nation.
A pledge to non-racialism and reconciliation is a hypocritical oath, in our deeply wounded society whose very artery was brutally severed by systemic racism. It is no antidote to racism.
I do not long for a non-racial South Africa. Not in a country which is still in the capture of white mastery, and which is yet to breathe economic freedom. I despair, sometimes, that white South Africans suffer from a serious ethical deficiency, I have said it many times before, and I will say it many times again – if whites had a moral compass, we would have returned land by now. As white South Africans, we thrive on the tonic of reconciliation, without backward glance. We super-charge on Freedom Day but we regard radical economic transformation as a bitter pill. The extravaganzas of social cohesion we saw with the anti-Zuma “Save South Africa” marches and other opposition marches, and the overdose of the “black and white selfies” at these marches did not warm my heart. It is not because I am heartless but because I am not moved by fake solidarity, among those who I am not sure march with common purpose.
Sadly, white South Africans, on the whole, want to preserve and Save a South Africa that safeguards their privilege, rather than invest in a free Azania.
I am a recovering Charterist. Once intoxicated by the Freedom Charter and the dream of a non-racial South Africa, I am no longer under the charm or sway of this lullaby of reconciliation. I don’t believe non-racialism and reconciliation are the happy pills we need. Not until reparations for apartheid and colonialism are made, as far as this is ever possible in a nation so horribly tortured by racism. Not while whiteness continues to defines our everyday. I don’t believe non-racialism is the right ‘corrective medicine’. Not now and perhaps not ever.
Malcolm X said “It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak”.
A free Azania, which embraces blackness first, not whiteness, is what we should all be dreaming of and striving towards. This is Africa. A place where whites are foreigners on stolen land, no matter how settled or ‘comfy’ we are. This is truth, unpalatable as it is to some. The birth of a free Azania is likely to be painful, as South Africa frees itself from the forceps of 300 years of apartheid and colonial state capture. But it will be something to celebrate. I don’t dream of a non-racial South Africa. It is not because I don’t believe in this place, but because I do. I do not support the manufactured call to Save South Africa, it is not a call for true transformation. I do however support an authentic call for a Free Azania. It is this that will liberate us all, black and white.
Kim Heller is a media and political strategist and a strong advocate of radical economic transformation
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN WEEKLY XPOSE AND WAS ALSO FEATURED IN NGOBOEMPIRE
THE UNCAPTURED TRUTH 