Superior mindset blinds Zille to Africa’s pain
TO UNDERSTAND the diatribes penned by Helen Zille on the pages of the Sunday Times and various other platforms romanticising colonialism, we will have to hark back to the heyday of European Enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries and follow its evolution into the present day society, identifying its supposedly civilising mission throughout the colonised world.
In so doing, we will empower ourselves to penetrate the world occupied by Zille and her predecessors, such as the colonial administrator and colonial missionary who seemingly believed themselves burdened with the thankless task of bringing the immense benefits of civilisation to their supposedly uncivilised, flea-infested and morally decrepit African counterparts.
This civilising mission arose from the belief, held by generations of whites, including Zille, that African people are lifelong children who cannot make it on their own in the world without being handheld, tutored and at times straightened out with the occasional lash by their otherwise benevolent and wellmeaning white guardians.
Our wannabe Cassandra is pained by the responses to her views because she believes, like the colonial missionary and administrator, that the civilising mission of colonialism was a benevolent act of kindness and the violence accompanying it was an unfortunate byproduct of a necessary project to liberate Africans from their stupefying beliefs in “outmoded” forms of existence – for which Africans should be eternally grateful.
Zille is gobsmackingly shocked by the natives’ response to her because, as she apparently understands it, she writes from the established dominance of European Enlightenment and all its modern forms that claim the honoured position of universal validity and superiority.
This is however something we all know was acquired through the rape, plunder and destruction of the colonised world.
But it is from the vantage point of established dominance of European Enlightenment that she can declare, against the lived experience and wisdom of millions of Africans, dead or alive, that colonialism brought us advanced health care, transport infrastructure and an independent judiciary in the place of outdated forms of existence.
In celebrating the success of its holocaust, European Enlightenment does not call on the experience of African people about colonialism for feedback about colonialism.
Instead it declares, as Zille does, a priori, that we should be eternally grateful for its civilizing nature.
Not only were we not consulted in determining the mode of existence imposed upon us, but we are not apparently intellectually mature enough to express our experience of that colonial legacy.
Contrary to Zille’s view we know colonialism was by far the most violent and bloody process known to humanity. Its destruction of human life – let alone the amount of African blood spilt in the process – is still unaccounted for.
Anything colonialism brought to the colonised world is stained with the blood of colonised people. And yes, colonial justice drips with the blood of Africans from head to toe.
Therefore the superiority of European forms of medicine, infrastructure and justice that we see in Africa today were asserted through violence. We cannot discuss their presence without acknowledging the violence that fortified them.
Attempts to insulate European forms of being in Africa without foregrounding their violence is intellectually dishonest.
At this stage, the obvious question arises, why the desperate attempts to sanitise colonialism of its violent nature, by Zille?
The answer lies in a related terrain. Young South Africans are radicalising and threatening to tear asunder the political compromise of 1994 which left white control of our land and economy virtually untouched since colonial times.
At the heart of this radicalisation is a demand for the decolonisation of our country which would tear into shreds white economic privilege and strip its economic and ideological stranglehold over our lives.
White South Africans such as Zille are scared that they will be kicked off the saddle which they have occupied since their triumph against our ancestors.
Hence they do their best to be- little calls for decolonisation at every turn, seeking to point us to what they claim are the positives of the colonial mission.
We must resist these mealymouthed attempts at sanitising colonialism by pointing to a non-existent positive side.
She and her ilk have never lived under the lash of the colonial master. Never once have they seen their world destroyed and a new one forced upon them as has happened to the Africans.
Not once has she found an “independent judiciary” unable to shelter her as happened to African people who live in squalid conditions plagued by disease and malnutrition, without so much a word of protest from the colonial justice which she calls upon us to celebrate. Consequently, she cannot understand the violence we experience every day because of colonialism and its civilising mission.
She is in no position to articulate for us how we should feel about the violence brought to our lives by colonial subjugation, its forms of justice and infrastructure or even healthcare.
It would do us good as an oppressed people to ignore her and her ilk because thus far, their existence and mode of being in the world has brought us nothing but misery. We must forge ahead with the demand for decolonisation and radical transformation.
Lazola Ndamase is SACP deputy secretary in the OR Tambo district