Come on, South Africa, let’s build that non-racial nation

There is unease, but Struggle hero’s funeral was a lesson in unity of purpose

and action

ON SUNDAY, the Joburg City Hall overflowed with more than 3 000 mourners who came to bid farewell to a figure in South African history who represented the antithesis of the recent outbursts of racism in our society.

Indres Naidoo, who died at the age of 79, was given an official provincial funeral and the crowd in the hall reflected the non-racial nation he’d fought for all his life: young and old, across the gender and race spectrum.

In a week when race forced itself on the nation’s attention, when South Africa seemed to awaken from 20 years of pretending that race had been consigned to history’s dustbin and when its persistence evoked revulsion and condemnation, the moment of Indres’s funeral was something that we all needed to share.

It was an event that ought to have been embraced enthusiastically, not only as an antidote and counterweight to the racist conduct that drew revulsion and provoked deep-seated anger among those who have been at the receiving end of white supremacy and those who abhor racism.

Yet it received scant coverage in our media.

When his passing became public, The Star urged that his death “affords us all a moment to pause and reflect”.

Such reflection should be aided by facts and events on the ground. The celebration of Indres’s life demonstrates how struggle activism and the pursuit of democracy, non-racialism and non-sexism are part of the DNA of the Naidoo and Pillay families who draw their lineage from Thambi and Veeramal Naidoo, colleagues of Mohandas Gandhi.

Why, then, did the moment fail to find attention in the media?

Political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi, in a different context, invokes the image of “parallel universes” where there are “attempts by some to dust away the sins of the past with the sins of the present”.

All of us, not just the politicians, have a duty to help our nation break out this “parallel universe”.

The funeral of Indres Naidoo was one such moment. Those who failed to convey this moment deprived the public of the opportunity to share a moment in the history that encapsulated South Africa’s march to non-racialism, non-sexism and democracy. Those who were not at the funeral missed out badly.

In the introduction to Reflections in Prison (2001), I wrote that: “There are those who seem to believe that the end of apartheid meant the end of racism…

“Perhaps our society had to pass through the euphoria generated by the first democratic election to be able to grapple with the need to deracialise our society.”

That hope of 15 years ago was wishful thinking on my part.

Recent events have shown we are far from the goal of deracialising our economy and society, let alone changing the patterns of behaviour nurtured by white supremacy and racism.

Are we poised to break out of the denialism that characterised post-apartheid SA?

Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya, in The Star of January 4, recounts that: “Penny Sparrow and her racist comment did not emerge from a vacuum. They are the inevitable outcome of a racist society that would not confront the reality of being racist.”

The past few days have shown that there is an overwhelming desire to reject racism; they have also shown that there are things happening, small things like the emergence of #nobodyisbornracist to which almost 100 parents have responded with pictures and comments showing their children playing with children of other races and that groups that have sprung up in Cape Town, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng have gathered 65 000 members already.

On Monday in Scottburgh, KwaZuluNatal, about 300 people drawn from across the colour line staged a peaceful march against racism. (Scottburgh is where Penny Sparrow hails from.) Is it not time that our media went out of its way to be partners in the project of the making of the nation?

Just as the ugly manifestations need to be subjected to the harsh glare of the scorching sunlight, so too should the public be made aware of events that celebrate our unity in diversity. This is not a call for the media to serve a party-political agenda but for the fourth estate to be a partner in realising a national imperative. Discerning the significance of events and sharing Indres’s funeral with the public will bring attention to the features that were part of the event – a matter of telling it like it is.

And it is critical that the story of where we come from as a people, the journey we have travelled in evolving a nation, is embedded in the consciousness of all South Africans. There can be no South African nation unless such a polity is stripped of every vestige of racism and sexism.

1910 produced a divided nation in which even the ruling white community was at war with itself. 1994 lay the foundations for us to build a united nation where our diverse languages, cultures, religions and colours become the warp and weave of the wondrous tapestry of a people at peace with themselves.

There is unease about the pace and quality of change that has happened over the past two decades. This is time for the uncompromising spirit that drove us to defeat apartheid to combine with the realism born of experience and the restlessness of youth to realise the promise we made to ourselves in 1994. The precondition, as demonstrated by Indres’s life, is the unity of purpose and action by the people. Mac Maharaj is an ANC and Umkhonto we Sizwe

veteran