Time wasted dealing with ignorant white folk who don’t know history
YOU know, being black can be really exasperating in this country. One is always battling multiple forces at the same – the failures of the ANC, white racism, economic exclusion, black tax [financial obligations to family], petty daily racism at work and on the streets, violence in our communities, unemployment – really, it is a long list!
So it was annoying that one had to wake up to the faux-liberalism of Democratic Alliance MP Natasha Mazzone, who said that while she accepted she had “white privilege”, her father, an Italian immigrant to South Africa, did not have privilege.
She stated that her father had arrived in South Africa in the 1960s with nothing. He apparently had to hold down three jobs concurrently and was treated badly because of “darker skin”.
She accepted that she has been privileged, but in comparison, she claimed, her father had none.
When radio anchor Bongani Bingwa asked her whether her father’s whiteness advantaged him over black people at the time, Mazzone answered that she was comparing him to herself.
My goodness. Did the logical fallacy of her argument not jump out her? A whole MP! Now, black people had to call in and waste their time correcting Mazzone’s political ignorance. Does she not know that in the 1960s and 1970s, the white apartheid government actively promoted European immigration to South Africa, promising such immigrants the “sunshine life”?
Does she not know that many poor Europeans came to South Africa precisely because it promised even the poorest European immigrant one of the highest standards of white life in the world?
Does Mazzone not realise that while her father, as hard as he worked, enjoyed the privilege of job reservation, of being able to send his children to highly funded public schools, of having cheap black labour? Did she consider that he was lucky to have three jobs in South Africa when most black people could not find one?
Why must black people always have to explain the basics to white South Africans? What level of denialism exists in the psyche of so many who kept apartheid alive? Does Mazzone read any history? Does she know that from the 1600s, Europeans began to send their poor working class men around the world on ships to trade, plunder and colonise? For three centuries, millions of poor and persecuted Europeans chose to migrate to the colonies because they had no job prospects at home.
Upon settling in these colonies, the majority of those poor Europeans grabbed land, exterminated indigenes and enslaved those who survived. The 1820 settlers came to South Africa, yes as poor Europeans, but shielded by the barrel of the colonial gun.
Does Mazzone know that it took 250 years of military and legal subjugation of Africans to make it possible for her father to arrive to a good life in 1960s?
Does Mazzone believe the oppression of black people began in 1979 when she was born?
It is tiring that this has to be explained again and again.
What is worse is Mazzone believes she is well-meaning.
This kind of petty ignorance is distracting. What I want to debate is how we must construct a land reform zoning framework to form part of the Expropriation Bill.
What this land reform zoning framework must do is identify areas where spatial apartheid has remained entrenched.
I’d much rather be debating the mechanics of expropriation and how it can practically happen in a way that actually delivers long-lasting social and economic justice to those who were dispossessed.
However, instead of tackling the tough questions of the day, hours of public discussion will now be devoted to the embarrassing ignorance of those like this white DA MP who fails to apply common sense and read history. Talk about the ultimate white privilege!