Let’s not perish together as fools

The heightened tensions in Phoenix and surrounding KwaZulu-Natal settlements, in the wake of the recent unrest, have shone the spotlight on one of our nation’s enduring, but ignored, faultlines. That of race. During the violence and looting in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng last month, residents in several places set up self-defence formations to counter a perceived threat to life and property. In Phoenix the situation very quickly became racialised — soon there was talk of a “Phoenix massacre” in which Phoenix’s Indian residents had, vigilante-style, apparently set upon and attacked blacks from neighbouring settlements. Purely, seemingly, on account of their race.

According to the police, the vast majority of the dead in Phoenix were black, while the bulk of suspects were Indian.

Off the back of that, the EFF staged a march against “Indian racists”, later re-renamed a “solidarity march”.

Perhaps when the prosecutions do happen they will yield more facts about what actually transpired in Phoenix. What is beyond doubt is that the incident severely strained relations between the residents of Phoenix and their neighbouring communities.

Phoenix became a microcosm of our country and its race question. Other fault lines, equally important, include the economic and the tribal.

The question is why, after more than a quarter of a century, we seem to be marking time, having failed to seriously confront the danger posed by our latent historical rifts.

On the political front, we have leaders and followers who are largely invested in maintaining racial difference as a prism through which they view the world, and upon which they make their choices.

The bulk of support for the main political parties tends to come from one racial group or another, with, for instance, most blacks supporting the ANC and EFF, while the DA draws its support largely from a cross-section of whites, coloureds and Indians. For the Freedom Front Plus it is the white Afrikaans vote in the main that matters.

The respective groups of supporters effectively become the political capital of the politicians they choose to support for racial reasons. What incentive, therefore, would there be for politicians to disrupt, or dismantle, the country’s racial voting patterns? Or to seek to heal divisions?

During its struggle against apartheid, the liberation movement was implacably opposed to tribalism. Strategically, this was in order to unite the oppressed. But fundamentally the stance represented a rejection of ethnic division (a cornerstone of apartheid’s grand design) and a desire to establish one nation out of SA’s diverse people.

With the fall of apartheid and the arrival of freedom, the new governing class were preoccupied with new challenges. But ethnicity remained a hidden feature of our national life, ever available as a convenient lever for those inclined to use it surreptitiously to advance their political or economic interests.

So as to avoid detection, the post-1994 tribalism sometimes masquerades as innocent provincialism, devoid of any political agenda.

Yet we know that many of our provinces are built on an ethnic foundation, also exploited by apartheid in its quest to divide and rule those it sought to subjugate. So today, regionalism and ethnic identity often overlap.

The third rift, crucially important, is economic inequality, characterised in part by the fact that the richest 10% of the population owns more than 85% of household wealth. The economic disparities provide fertile ground for endemic social instability.

Despite our claim to be the poster child of successfully negotiated political solutions, we have shown a breathtaking aversion to seriously addressing our crisis of faultlines.

Yet it should be obvious to all that permitting and perpetuating divisions can only be detrimental to the interests of the country and its people. Instead of laying the foundation for a fairer and more just society, we are choosing to bequeath to the next generation of South Africans a country racked by suspicion and endless conflict.

To avert that eventuality we need to rethink support for leaders whose stock in trade is to divide the nation by promoting ethnic or racial interests over the collective good of all. In the interests of the country and future generations we should refuse to become captive voting fodder for leaders who tell us that our collective future will be best served by disunity and conflict, rather than unity and a commonness of purpose.

In order to foster social cohesion, the government should halt race-based apartheid-era spatial planning, which entrenches the physical separation of people on a racial basis — and forces the poorest to live far from employment and economic activity.

Economically, rather than pursuing a devil-take-thehindmost approach, we should have that economic Codesa some have been calling for. It should address our long-standing economic inequalities and envision the more inclusive, growing, post-Covid South African economy that has been hinted at since the pandemic started.

The question for our leaders in politics, in the economy and elsewhere, is whether each choice they make now will be in the best interests of the country and all its people. Or whether the chosen option will sow the seeds of conflict and regression. It is as much a question for all of us as citizens of the republic.

And it would stand us in good stead to hearken to advice given at another time, in another place, by a great humanist, Martin Luther King jnr: “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

True when said last century as it is true today.

Why have we failed to seriously confront the danger posed by our latent historical rifts?