‘We declared victory too early’

Denial about the real state of the country must – and can – be overcome, says Ramphele

YOU CAN’T accuse Mamphela Ramphele of being inconsistent, or faint-hearted.

Nelson Mandela was still very much the figurehead of project New South Africa when Ramphele warned at a conference that “corruption among black people was too often justified on the basis that they occupied the ‘moral high ground’ as victims of apartheid oppression ( and that) until whites ditched the myth of superiority and the country confronted this humiliating fallacy head-on, South Africans ‘cannot talk about a shared society’”.

That was in August 1999. These nearly 18 years later she has proved herself tireless in being willing to go back over the covered ground – her own

“We have become tolerant of the use of this narrative as an excuse for the entitlement to rule by the ANC.”

On the other hand, it was essential for white society to acknowledge that the “accrued benefits and privileges of our divided past (which produced “one of the most successful affirmative action programmes ever implemented”) were “entrenched” in the settlement of 1994.

Without such acknowledgement, “healing the wounds of the humiliation of poverty in the midst of plenty” would be impossible, denying the country the scope for genuine renewal and growth.

Ramphele said the “failure to confront the scars left on the psyche of black and white” was everywhere evident.

It was no surprise “the chickens have come home to roost… personal violence, domestic violence, public violence. I would go as far as saying even corruption and lack of accountability has a lot to do with this unfinished business, where people feel entitled to enrichment for all they have gone through.

“The ANC as an organisation acknowledges it is riddled with this sense of entitlement – but that matches poorly with white people who do not recognise that their privileges of today were bought at the expense of the majority.”

Ramphele paused, adding: “I bought this house in 2004 because I am one of the lucky few who managed to get educated and get a profession… but (many homeowners in suburbs like Camps Bay) inherited these houses which their parents or grandparents had built at a fraction of today’s cost.

“Nobody is expecting people to give away their homes… but can we just at least have an acknowledgement?”

Without it, could there really be enough trust to forge a hopeful future?

Enabling people to understand they were poor not because “you are lazy or there is something wrong with you” was a vital element of restoring their self-respect and dignity.

The key lay in the constitution of 1996 – and Ramphele’s latest activist venture, “Re-imagine South Africa” – as the means of instilling in young people a sense of their own agency, their “rights and responsibilities” as citizens.

“We, the upper middle classes, have ourselves to blame for people remaining in darkness about their rights and responsibilities, because we have not pushed hard enough for the healing of wounds, and the structural reforms needed to get people to positions where they can participate meaningfully as citizens, and prosper.

“Right now they can only prosper by attaching themselves to some authority figure; their power as individuals has yet to be revealed to them and to be recognised, or be effective in getting leaders to be accountable to them.

“We also need to end the

‘The reason we ‘No one can say

silence of our own complicity, those of us who are aware of what is going on, and have not spoken out loudly enough… not about what ‘they’ have been doing, but what ‘we’ have not been doing.”

Re- imagine South Africa would seek to reach the widest range of constituencies in the country, and confront people with the question: what are you going to do?

“That’s what matters,” Ramphele said. “No one can say there is nothing they can do because they are just an ‘ordinary person’. The question is, because you are an ordinary person, how are you going to change what you do in your home, street, community, workplace, place of worship? It’s not just about re-imagining the country ‘out there’.”