Although South Africa, as a
nation, has transformed from an oppressed apartheid state to a questionable
democracy (I will leave this debate for another day!) since 1994, we have still
not liberated ourselves from the scourge that is racism. The only thing that
has evidently changed is the political dispensation from oppression to
democracy in the guise of a world leading Constitution. Ye t this, coupled with
22 years of hard work has not transformed our society from racist behaviour as
experienced prior to 1994. The latest confrontations between campus students at
various universities across South Africa, lends credence to the fact that ours
is a society still sick with racist and discriminatory tendencies, which is
evidently deep rooted in the individual psyche. Some would argue that 400 years
of oppression cannot be eradicated in the space of 22 years. My argument is that if bad-ass legislation (something
similar to Saudi Arabia’s criminal laws) is put in place to curb the scourge of
racism, we can eradicate racism in our society within a period of 20 years!
The introduction of BEE as
legislation, has expanded the middle and upper class, predominantly, and
improved the lives of PDIs (Previously Disadvantaged Individuals) fortunate
enough to have prospered from such legislation. Unfortunately, this has given
rise to another form of discrimination not only between people of different
races, but sadly between people of the same race, i.e. class and social
discrimination. As a result of the
expansive growth of the middle and upper class through BEE legislation (and
government corruption), South Africa has arguably become the most unequal
society in the world. The Gini
Coefficient for South Africa, which measures the average wealth of the richest
ten percent compared to the poorest ten percent, has consistently been the
worst (most unequal) of all countries measured over the last 5 to 10
years.
Although some of us have improved
our lives from humble grassroots to the prominent middle class, in terms of
earning and living standards, we tend to have forgotten how we got there and
who we had left behind (or who was not fortunate enough to have prospered from
same said BEE legislation). With the
country currently in a state of indefinite protest with sporadic violence and
pilfering by different protest groups, there seems to be a tendency of
favouring one group of protesters over the other, seemingly based on skin colour
and/or social circumstances. I may be barking up the wrong tree, but a case in
point is the protest of local residents from Parkwood in Cape Town, who were
protesting against the destruction of their settlement of shacks. Here, we have
a typical case where people from poverty stricken and low income earning
households objecting to the destruction of their humble homes. Given the circumstances,
it was inevitable that the protest may escalate into something quite familiar, i.e.
the looting of nearby businesses, or destruction of property through wanton
acts of vandalism. I’m not condoning
these actions or saying they were well within their rights to take the protest
to the next level. On the contrary, there should have been a community leader
to co-ordinate the protest peacefully and ensure no such vandalism occurred.
But, as is wont in most unmanaged protest marches in this country, the
inevitable DID occur, with unfavourable repercussions. This unfortunate act of
vandalism (as a result of a legitimate reason for protesting) was scorned upon
in Social Media as a scourge worse than the bubonic plague. Unprintable words
and phrases to describe the perpetrators were strewn around social media sites,
with media hacks expressing their “utter disgust” of the act in question.
Amazingly, or should I say disappointingly, MOST of these comments came from
people of the same race……
Turning to the two incidents that
happened at TUKS and OFS Universities, where protests of a more complex nature
were unfolding, the conclusion to these protests resulted in brutal violence
BETWEEN race groups. The social circumstances of these groups, I’m inclined to
believe, was that of a more progressive position than those protesters in the
Parkwood debacle. Although there were traumatised and hospitalised victims as a
result of this blatant act of violence from a group of racist white “intellectuals”,
I failed to find a similar uproar from the same group of people who so openly
showed their disgust for the Parkwood protest.
I’m therefore inclined to believe
that if you are from a specific social class, or specific race, your behaviour
in public, no matter how unsociable, is acceptable and is condoned unreservedly
by the keepers of middle class society. Although the violent protests at the
campuses were denounced by people from different persuasions on Social Media
websites, the reaction was less so than that of the very distasteful reactions
for the Parkwood protests. THAT,
unfortunately, is the price we South Africans pay for being the most unequal
society in the world. If we are struggling to rid our Society from racist
bigots after 22 years of democracy, how long will it still take to rid our
society from class discrimination, and heaven forbid, BETWEEN people of the
same race group!
