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During the 90's hope was found that a century old dream of a united and equal South Africa would finally come to pass. Two decades later we would have to acknowledge that our country is neither united nor equal.
Growing up in a post apartheid South African society has to be described as a truly unique experience riveted by inner contradictions.
I recall once being prohibited from playing with 'that black child' from school by my father. He also warned that he could clearly view our preschool's play ground from a friend's yard across the street. Knowing how he lost his temper, I submitted without question. I spent the next days avoiding my only friend at school. He did not understand and honestly neither did I. Yet that was the first time I began thinking in terms of 'us' and 'them'.
This line of thought dominated my young mind for much of my formative years. I never considered myself racist purely because I held my beliefs to be beyond question. 'They' simply did not belong in 'our' world. I was systematically growing into an identical clone of the Afrikaner right wing which had surrounded me for the greater part of my life.
If there was a single event which lead me to question that which I had once taken for granted it would be the time father was arrested for picking up what he had thought was a prostitute but in actual fact turned out to be an undercover officer who was part of a sting operation on drug smugglers. Police records show that he had driven past several lightly pigmented officers to pick up a dark skinned lady. My father that would frequently proclaimed that there is no such thing as a 'good black'(although black was not his word of choice here) would not only pick her up but was going to pay her for sexual intercourse!
As I later came into contact not only with more people whom appeared unlike myself, but also overwhelming scientific and historic evidence which proves that the concept of race was man made(rather than divinely inspired as I once believed), it became increasingly difficult if not all together impossible to hold on to my racialist beliefs.
However I could not adopt a position of neutrality either, knowing even then that by not standing against injustice automatically places one in favor of it.
This might nearly seem like a fairytale ending to the rainbow nation narrative. If it were true for all South Africans the dream would have been half way achieved. We would have been united wile our unity would have ensured that achieving equality would merely have been a matter of time. Yet it is far from it. We are not united while indications are that inequality is actually increasing.
In reality the Afrikaner right is still very much alive and well. They either reject science as ungodly or counter it with their own brand of pseudoscience, just as they reject historic records as the concoction of some external forces which are forever plotting a 'white genocide' by encouraging 'inter breeding'. Naturally they equate any redressive policies to a system which relegated the majority to second class citizenship by virtue of their skin colour.
On the other hand one increasingly observes the rise of an Afrikaner far left. This block openly seeks to serve as a counter balance to the right. In a recent article one such Afrikaner argued that by virtue of being 'white' one should be considered racist - whether you like it or not. Somehow the irony of this statement was lost both on him and his supporters.
This group appears to base it's ideology on the notion that one should be ashamed of the skin that you were born with. They would quickly point out that the history of the Afrikaner is not nearly as rich as the right would have us believe. While this is undoubtedly true, can the same not be said of most cultural groups? In recent times one might point to a character such as Robert Mugabe, a man responsible for genocide and the impoverishment of millions of Zimbabwean citizens, yet hailed as a hero across the African continent.
While the rise of such a group is understandable, I believe that their approach is destined by history to failure. White guilt is the flip side of white supremacy which most centrist Afrikaners would likely continue to reject. In the worst case scenario they could lead many to move themselves more closely to the right.
Einstein famously said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice whilst expecting different results. Of course he was wrong, insanity is in reality a very serious mental disorder. Perhaps we could agree that it might be the definition of stupidity.
As is the case more often than not, the answer is to be found in the middle of two extremes. The solution lays not in a group which seeks to be as loud and controversial as the right, but that instead seeks to systematically root out the dogma which ensures the pro existence of racialism. A group which realizes that even if we can not teach old dogs new tricks, dogmatic beliefs have not yet been engraved into the minds of the youth and generations to come. Their loyalty to our cause of non racialism is still very much up for grabs. It will also require empathy. At some point all of us were either centrist or to the right - placing oneself on an intellectual or moral pedestal more often than not proves counter productive to the cause.
Obviously this is not some fairytale or soap opera with a inevitable happy ending within a prescribed time frame. It requires a continual commitment from each of us to consistently and publicly stand against racialism in any form - even if it is perpetuated by a purplish blue-grey man, rather than only when it conveniently portrays us as being opposed to the Afrikaner right.
Perhaps we can all learn a powerful lesson from Madiba's words - "I detest racialism because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man." While the right's overt racism must be publicly rejected, few solutions are to be found in the far left's more refined racialism.
Contrary to both these groups we must work together to identify and reject all forms of racialism, fully acknowledging that failing to do so would merely repeat the exact thinking which created our problems and ultimately lead us to the same inevitable conclusions.
