Racism in SA no mirage conjured up by Bell Pottinger
It was the tweet that tipped the discussion over the edge: after months of making political hay out of the Bell Pottinger disinformation campaign, the DA piously tweeted: “It’ll take SA years to rebuild severely fragile race relations which #BellPottinger, Guptas & Zuma’s sought to exploit for their own gains.” [sic]
While most can agree the dirty tricks of Bell Pottinger — an assortment of English toffs long infamous for representing some of the world’s nastiest regimes — are reprehensible, the DA is laying it on a bit thick.
It pursued Bell Pottinger vigorously with demonstrations in London and through the British public relations watchdog, which this week expelled the firm from its ranks.
The need for full disclosure of documents that detail the work done for the Guptas — particularly given the suspicion that this was paid for with money looted from the public purse — is undisputed.
But the DA is also being disingenuous. The frenzy with which it has ridden this particular hobby horse led to several wags on Twitter suggesting it won’t be long before the party claims that apartheid arrived on SA’s shores with Bell Pottinger.
Undoubtedly, the tweeting classes were offended by the crude propaganda churned out by the Guptabots and their proxies. South Africans of all races were justifiably enraged by images of former public protector Thuli Madonsela portrayed as “the Cow of White Monopoly Capital”, complete with pendulous udders and a ring in her nose. They were offended by the lies peddled about editors’ private lives in a thuggish attempt to intimidate them into silence.
But mostly, they were angry that looted money was being used to pay for a fight-back by people who had captured the state. Most were not angry that they were talking about race or trying to “sow divisions”.
During the saga, it sometimes seemed white South Africans were more upset at the notion of Bell Pottinger trying to sow racial division than they were about actual racism — particularly the structural racism that is the country’s legacy.
Undoubtedly, the crude nature of their propaganda let down the Gupta campaign and made many wonder how they managed to pocket R20m for such amateurish spin.
But all good propaganda contains a chunk of truth, and in this case, the unpleasant truth is that SA remains deeply divided on racial lines.
The intersections of race and class are very clearly rooted in the apartheid monster, which contrary to popular liberal belief, did not magically end with democracy in 1994.
Clearly, Bell Pottinger had no hand in the creation of the white men behaving shamefully in the Spur video, the KFC video or the Ocean Basket video. Clearly, the grinding poverty that reduces so many black South Africans to the status of paupers in their own land is not the fabrication of a fancy public relations agency from London.
Despite this, many unreconstructed white South Africans have not made any attempt to fully engage with and understand the full horror of apartheid. Many expect black people to “get over it” or claim they weren’t old enough to be complicit. And far too many white people have participated in the subtle mental slide from oppressor to victim.
I’ve lost count of how many white people have tried to tell me they are now an oppressed minority: the spectrum ranges from the “white genocide” crowd on one end, skims over the “white male fragility” crowd and ends with the “but we worked hard” brigade. (The same people are genuinely baffled when it is pointed out that the majority of SA’s working class live below the poverty line.)
This is inevitably followed by complaints that their children have no future and cannot find jobs because of affirmative action. Emotive rhetoric aside, the data speak for themselves: white people still hold a disproportionate amount of power and wealth.
In many ways, the worst are not even the rabid apartheid apologists who can regularly be seen on Twitter claiming apartheid was not as bad as the Holodomor or the Holocaust and thus not a crime against humanity (as if we are participating in some kind of macabre Oppression Olympics). They are open and honest about their racism, don’t try to hide it and are hopefully a small minority.
The greater danger comes from the much larger group of “smiling white liberals” who would never use the K-word but get very exercised when asked to consider their white privilege: the people who fail to understand that being white doesn’t mean they can never go through a hard time, but that they are not having a hard time because they are white.
These are the people who really think colonialism and apartheid weren’t entirely wrong; people who have lived in SA all their lives and never bothered to learn even the most basic pleasantries in an African language but will kick and scream for their right to be called African.
These are the people who do not interact socially with blacks, who live in racial enclaves and whose entire understanding of black people is based on their relationships with their gardener or domestic worker.
These people are a danger – to the country and to themselves. These are the people who long for the days of the “rainbow nation” and deny that transformation has stalled. Many are happy with that status quo.
The Bell Pottinger furore may have been a useful rallying point for South Africans with state capture, but it must not be allowed to become a diversion from the very real problems of race-based inequality in SA.
If the DA has any hope of becoming the governing party, it must understand that this issue will not be as easily dealt with as that dodgy public relations firm in London.