Where is the justice in trading my dignity for your comfort?
My rainbow-coloured glasses fell off a long time ago and I have been existing, breathing, bleeding and living an unfiltered version of South Africa for a while now.
I used to get quite fired up and ready to rail at the slightest hint of discriminatory and prejudicial use of language and/or display of bigoted action, and for the most part I understand it as having been a function of a strong sense of justice.
It, of course, served its purpose at the time and I’m sure it may, at a future date, still find expression given just the right dose of offending bigotry that confronts me at a slightly less composed time.
My concern now is less about being reactive but more about thinking deeply about what it means to be a South African, with a complex and contested history but also a history that has had moments of untempered joy and warmth.
What it means to be a South African today as I navigate a more complex and nuanced present that demands my full attention and presence and presents moments that can sometimes arrest a somewhat somnambulant state of discontent with flashes of hope and impatience.
What does the future South African me grapple with and where will I find solace and community as a culmination of my actions and the ideological standpoints I occupy and defend?
I am acutely aware of a seething anger that permeates our country that is premised on injustices past and present, tempered by unexpressed or validated grief.
What interests me is not a performance of whose injustice is perceived and whose injustice is legitimate. We all know the answer to that, even the most dedicated apologists among us. What interests me is the commitment to the erasure of the impact of glaring generational violence of an entire people simply because to acknowledge it is too inconvenient and uncomfortable.
I often hear the shallow and quite frankly illegitimate argument that 30 years of democracy should surely be enough to make up for 8% of the population that continues to thrive, plunging 80% of the country into generational cycles of poverty and searing mental health anguish.
People talk of the post-1994 generation as being blank canvases that have no links to our recent past and yet they are the direct manifestations of the results of an oppressive system that has been overthrown and is now in the process of resetting, but which cannot be done without reparations. It is not by chance that there are two sides of the post-1994 generation: one born into the privilege and abundance of the suburbs and one born into the squalor and scarcity of the townships.
Attempts at redressing this injustice, however, are met with dismissive and nonsensical claims of perceived “retribution”, so what is to happen? Is the argument that there should be no reparations and, if so, why?
Who are we saying deserves to remain locked in a cycle of poverty while beneficiaries of injustice are granted a clean slate and clear conscience? Again this is a question that would have boiled my blood as a youth but right now I just want someone to rationally explain to me why my dignity must be traded for someone else’s comfort.