Aimless fury of the race debate, meaningful transformation and freedom

WHAT IF THERE WERE NO WHITES IN SOUTH

AFRICA? Ferial Haffajee Picador Africa SOMETHING started to bug Ferial Haffajee a few years ago – a refrain, the words of which would not fit comfortably in her mouth, a repetition of a handful of tropes that didn’t ring true in her own experience of life as a black journalist living and working in Joburg, a growing irritation with people unable or unwilling to see meaningful transformation in South Africa.

“When I preach my gospel of change, of black accomplishment and of the good and healthy fruits of freedom, it is as if I am the anti-Christ. It is as if I have journeyed to a place where nothing has changed, where an oppressive minority controls thought and destiny. A place where black people labour under a system of white supremacy.”

She discovered that her own ideas about non-racialism – a fundamental principle of our constitution which sets out the collapse of the structures of oppression that made black and white people unequal – were fast becoming quaint, if not downright offensive, and that the popular ideology that had come to replace it was “whiteness”.

“Whiteness,” she explains, “is the study of a system of privilege in which white people are held to be at the centre of the gaze. It is, I find, an idealogy and school of thought that has come to surpass non-racialism as a prism through which to understand contemporary South Africa.”

In order to address her discomfort with a narrative that did not reflect her own experience of life in post-apartheid South Africa – in which she does not see white people as the centre of her own gaze – she summoned young black thinkers to round-table discussions. She was on a mission to understand, as thoroughly as she could, why non-racialism is such an outdated idea.

This book is a reflection of thoughts, her discussions, her agreements and her counterarguments.

My sense is that most people will not get past the title, which has been critisised for being, amongst other things, “silly” and another example of putting whites at the centre of South Africa’s narrative.

However, if you find the title an affront, I suggest that you do as Haffajee did: open up, listen, think. Someone, after all, needs to ask some hard questions out in the open. Certainly, writers who are able to write in against populist trends must be read to broaden and deepen any understanding of social realities.

Don’t expect an answer to the title’s question though. South Africa has whites. In diminishing numbers, as the statistics show, but they are a fact, and Haffajee does not provide some simple solution to what she calls “the aimless fury of the race debate”.

What she does do, however, is listen. In fact, the book feels like more of an exercise in listening, than an exercise in speaking. In this aspect, I feel the book makes a useful contribution to current debates raging in every part of our society: by showing how active and engaged listening works.

By merely demonstrating how to listen to uncomfortable things and think about them in an open way, Haffajee displays precisely the kind of ethics she feels are lacking in the “echochambers” of social media race debates.

Using personal anecdotes, opinion formed from a wide and deep understanding of South Africa, as well as statistics and graphics, Haffajee presents the complexities that have given rise to the new intolerance of the ideas of reconciliation and non-racialism that underpinned the transition to democracy.

Her style is journalistic, ethically rigorous and straightforward. She presents all sides, while constantly challenging herself and her own beliefs.

While she questions the idea of being a black pawn in a system of white supremacy, she shows a real engagement with the ideology of whiteness and provides ample statistical support for why it has come to replace non-racialism.

Land ownership and business remain untransformed (she provides and criticises the numbers) and until this changes, the race debate will continue dogging our every interaction.

We are nowhere near ready for any imagined future and the “bankrupt” government, daily sucked into crisis management, is not going to provide the leadership that is required to steer us off the path of destruction, she says.

“The work is not done. Our country is not ready to move into the future,” she writes.

She realises, through active listening, that her own pragmatic attitude of efficiency and solution-seeking is out-dated.

“The mantra of ‘Oh, come on, just move on’ is a hopeless failure. Equally, the mantra of believing that true freedom lies in having what whites have is chimera and a path to disappointment and failure.”

She examines The Student Spring, which, she says, posed “tantalising and different potentials”.

Being able to include the #FeesMustFall movement of October this year, gives her book a fresh and current feel, and provides a chance for the reader to pause and consider – as Haffajee has done – our collective future. Whether whites are reckoned in or not.