Attend to structural racism

Earlier this week, the Equality Court exonerated AfriForum’s Ernst Roets from a contempt of court charge preferred against him following his provocative tweet of the apartheid-era flag after Gauteng deputy judge president Phineas Mojapelo’s August ruling that the public display of the flag constitutes hate speech.

To paraphrase former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, after his September 1976 meeting with then Prime Minister, John Vorster, the question that sometimes exercises the minds of some who abhor the apartheid flag, is whether the attention given to “creature[s] from the Old Testament” like Roets, is sufficient to addressing the challenge at hand.

A similar niggling feeling arose following the 2016 furore over the much-publicised, racist Facebook post by the recently deceased Penny Sparrow, especially as it came to distract attention from and nearly eclipse other pressing national challenges.

For a country that has had race and racism as its pivotal public policy drivers for more than 350 years, spirited protests against racism are unsurprising. And since racism did not end with the demise of formal apartheid in 1994, every effort to shine the light on its vile expressions must be encouraged.

But what about structural racism – the totality of the abiding historic-socio-economic relations which perpetuate and reinforce white privilege and superiority on the one hand, and black disadvantage and inferiority on the other?

The prevalent tendency – about which the media are as guilty as other members of the chattering classes – seems to be one which pays disproportionate attention to incidents of individual racism than the historic structural social relations that produced and perpetuate the racial privilege and disadvantage which breeds the verbal and physical violence against people of colour.

This tendency leads to several consequences that do not necessarily advance the construction of a truly non-racial South Africa to which all but creatures from the Old Testament profess commitment.

Firstly, the sustained super-ordination of individual racism over structural racism de-escalates attention from the latter and imprisons the country in an emotive zone which may, in the long term, serve the interests of racists more than the country.

Secondly, we deny ourselves an opportunity to pursue a national discourse on an understanding of the historical evolution of our country and the policy options we must explore in a national effort to address the continuing allround legacy of colonialism and apartheid.

Thirdly, it prolongs the fault lines of the past, which are structural, holds the nation formation and nation building project in abeyance and sustains an “us” and “them” frame of mind while at the same time breathing life into race, racism and white privilege denialism in our society.

The latter point is best illustrated by American academic and anti-racism activist, Peggy McIntosh, who wrote in 1990: “As a white person I had been taught about racism that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage … White privilege is an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in every day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious.”

Denialism is both resilient and deceptive in that it takes refuge in appeals of “Simunye” – “we are one” – and readily counsels black audiences to “forget about the past and move on”, while strenuously refusing to appreciate that the future can only be constructed by honestly coming to terms with the past.

It also promotes a narrative in which society views government as the only social institution responsible for resolving the legacy of colonialism and apartheid which is presumed to have nothing to do with the present.

In this paradigm, the reasons for government slowness or failure to resolve this past are explained by ineptitude and corruption; of which the race of those in charge is supposedly the problem. In doing so, the narrative invariably shuts out the sheer weight of the colonial and apartheid project on the present and ignores the need for an honest engagement about the past.

For its refusal to come to terms with the legacy of colonialism and apartheid, denialism is short-sighted.

It promotes the unequal racial structural relations to which fellow compatriots are opposed and must count as one of society’s polarising and instability factors.

We must fight against individual racism. In doing so, we must simultaneously expend more time and energy to the race-based triple challenge of unemployment, poverty and inequality.

Another culprit that must come under greater scrutiny is institutional racism in the wider economic sphere which gives effect to the triple challenge not only by pursuit of race-based employment practices, but also failure of those who command productive capital to appreciate the responsibility they have to support the democratic dispensation in a variety of ways, most importantly through greater investments in the economy. So must we also arrest the continued decline of the public education system.

The government cannot but continue to evolve policies for far-reaching social change.

A critical area in this regard is undoubtedly the reversal of apartheid spatial settlement patterns that keep the Group Areas and Influx Control Acts alive and enforced by a cocktail of race and class factors.

As a key driver in efforts to rid the country of the colonial and apartheid legacy, municipalities should continually assess how their by-laws, land use management policies and the general trajectory of their local economic development efforts facilitate or otherwise impede redress, integration and social cohesion.

Yet another key and unavoidable undertaking, is an inspired anti-racism public education campaign, starting with the schooling system. We must get to a point where there are no “Uhms” “ifs” and “buts” about the hideousness of racism throughout society.

In March this year, government launched a “National Action Plan to combat Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.” The fact that we see and hear little of it in the face of the rootedness of the problems it seeks to combat serves to secure unfettered space for creatures from the Old Testament.

Another culprit that must come under scrutiny is institutional racism