Beware of identity politics
It’s sad to see fissures caused among the oppressed by our oppressors widened ‘post liberation’
I’M A child of the ’80s, and grew up in Kliptown (proclaimed 1903), a place whose history is parallel to that of cosmopolitan townships like Sophiatown, Alexandra, Evaton, Cato Manor, District Six and Albertville, where human nature is operating on a hand-to-hand, phata-phata, body-tobody contact irrespective of identity or ethnicity.
I was influenced by the teachings of the Black Consciousness Movement, that pursued the emancipation of black people, a generic term including all the previously oppressed (Africans, coloureds and Indians). Black Consciousness was part of the general ethos, a political reaction to colonialism, and reflected the post-colonial Struggle – because colonialism, besides carving up Africa into separate identities, ethnic identities and language groups, encouraged an apartheid hate.
It was an old strategy of the colonialists (British, Germans, Dutch, French, etc) to divide and conquer. The division gave some people more than others, which led to us fighting among ourselves, instead of against the larger threat that was actually pulling the strings and still pulls them.
We are now dealing with the ethnically constructed camps, labour reservoirs or reserves that helped serve the larger South African political system.
Apartheid was a social architecture in terms of designing and positioning people, a much-improved model of colonialism. That is why when true selfless activists talk about our Struggle – not our Johnny-come-latelies or stomach politicians – they don’t talk about the Struggle from the ’50s but the Struggle that goes back 300 years.
They draw a continuous line that shows apartheid was just a redevelopment of the existing power relationships in colonial settler communities.
The settler communities were clearly about coming in and asserting themselves in the centre and splitting up the indigenous populations into various sub groups which they then subsequently used and exploited.
An example is a ploy used to divide the indigenous population by the co-option of Krotoa, a linguist (fluent in Dutch, Portuguese, English and Mandarin due to her interaction with all these nations who used the Cape as a halfway station): they turned her into a “house slave” or “impimpi”.
However, she saw through the settlers and kept the indigenous people abreast of the intentions of their conquerors in the “big house”, especially her uncle Autshumato, known by the settlers as “Harry Die Strandloper” – the first escapee from Robben Island and – African freedom fighters who expropriated the “first people’s” cattle from the settlers.
It’s sad to see the fissures caused among the oppressed by our oppressors widened “post liberation”, making the Cecil John Rhodes, Verwoerds, Vorsters and their kin jitterbug wherever they are, while the Sobukwes, Bikos, Masemolas, Plaaitjies, Madibas Shakas, Madikizelas, Meers, Lollans, Chachalias, Autsumaos, Krotoas etc are turning in their graves.
The wretched part is that our (formerly oppressed) protests are racialised and our so-called leaders are milking these man-made divisions. Some pull wool over the eyes of the dejected, us by wearing overalls – and unveil their manifestos next to shacks, while they live in leafy suburbs guarded by sentinels and consume caviar.
The Ngugis and Fanons warned us of these charlatans. But still we can’t see through these plastic prophets of destruction because they are of “us”, shaming Ma Afrika (meaning all who pay allegiance to the soil). Some of us who straddle these ethnic reserves are appalled at the stereotypes and derogatory views we have of one another.
The danger of any identity is that whenever you are threatened you gravitate to a tribal, laager mentality and ethnic way of thinking. Identity is the first form of violence because what it does, simply put, is it separates.
I am this or that and when you pronounce “I” you pronounce against “them”. The self is extracting you from a communal space. So how do we deal with that deconstruction of the “I”? Society and the education system perpetuate that conditioning.
The “I” becomes “me and my group, my tribe, my community” etc, as opposed to “the other” that becomes an external threat.
We saw this kind of archaic expression in the recent protests across Mzansi’s communities and during the trial of Jacob Zuma, and the fact that Black Mambazo even offered him their studio free of charge because he is one of them – irrespective of his state looting and Stalinist actions while he was president. As a society, we need to talk about the violence of “I”.
As an artist one knows we need to destroy the “I”, the ego, the superego to make art. The ego is an outer shell like an impi’s shield, it is there to protect, but it is a shell that is hardened over time, over history, over the trauma that we experience growing into adults. We use that shell/shield to protect ourselves, so it’s extremely hard to crack that ego or the superego. It is reinforced by the notion “I” – “I this”, “I that”. “I’m different.”
Identity gives us a false sense of security. Why do we need attachments? Because we’ve been brought up in a world that thrives on the fact that we are empty, so we are constantly looking to fill up the emptiness.
We desperately need pedagogy in our society that can change this. We need a social engineering programme called “Eenigheid” where we’ll be forced to live cheek by jowl, listen to Caiphus Semenya’s Westwind, and do nationbuilding workshops. Ha ha! ha!
Some pull wool over the eyes of the dejected by wearing overalls – and unveil their manifestos next to shacks while they live in leafy suburbs