Define transformation

Until we have defined what kind of country we want to be, transformation will always be just about race and BEE numbers

As I watched the DA tripping over itself trying to explain its position on black economic empowerment (BEE) I realised it was just as incompetent and dishonest as the rest of us. In a country with as charged a history of race as ours, I guess it is difficult to call a spade a spade for fear of causing offence.

The difficulty of the DA’s position is that it has already offended a lot of the people it hopes will turn out to vote for it next year. But I digress.

Fundamentally, the issue is not just how the DA deals with BEE but how we all deal with race, and how it continues to shape our politics. Even some senior leaders of the ANC have resorted to calling white people “boers” once more. No amount of verbal acrobatics can cloak the nakedness of that appeal to racial fear.

We have done a consistent job of papering over the cracks during the past 19 years, with some developing a strange belief that racism died on April 28 1994. With this came an assumption that black people no longer have to deal with life challenges brought about by apartheid. We have also deluded ourselves into believing that transformation and diversity are about replacing white people with black people.

Both positions and their various manifestations are superficial and sometimes arise out of dishonesty. Transforming our society is not just about race and racism but also about changing other harmful attitudes too. When we insist on the primacy of race as a transformation criterion we imply that homophobia and sexism, for instance, are lesser evils.

While the stigma of blackness is familiar to many black people, there are many other stigmas different South Africans endure on a daily basis. Some of the people who complain bitterly about racism are incredibly sexist, xenophobic, homophobic or all three.

They come from all sides of the racial divide and live among us as “decent” people. We shrug or shake our heads when they spew their bile instead of standing up to it.

The starting point of our efforts to transform society is to say exactly what we want to transform it into. Many people I have asked cannot answer this question beyond the politics of race. I think this is instructive.

We should be trying to build a society whose ethical foundation is premised on investing more public resources and the goodwill of the public in favour of those who are marginalised. At this point most of these are black people, but they include many others we persecute because the ill-feeling towards them transcends race.

The second is to recognise that the most prevalent discrimination is subtle rather than crude. It is practised by “decent” people whose actions amount to unfair discrimination and even hate. It is how those who benefit from the status quo find subliminal ways of consolidating their advantaged positions while actively denying the “others” entry into the mainstream of SA life.

In the same way that the assumption that every black person has a transformative attitude is devoid of substance, it is disingenuous of the DA to pretend there are no racist liberals. There are — many of them in its own ranks.

Some aren’t even liberal, having been scavenged by Tony Leon’s “fight back” campaign from the NP rump.

We cannot ignore the often exploited, neat coincidence between antitransformative behaviour and a version of liberalism which sees transformation as another version of apartheid when it is not.

In public discourse we hear this sophistry all the time, for instance from people who purport to support gender equality while demonstrating a patronising, patriarchal attitude.

Transformation is about ridding society of such unethical behaviours. Founding a transformed, cohesive society requires honest and brave leadership.

zibis@fm.co.za @songezozibi