What do we do about racists like Zille?
Mpumelelo Mkhabela
The suffering of black people under colonialism and apartheid architects is well documented. Racism – subliminal and overt – is a big problem around the world. South Africa is a hot spot.
Western Cape Premier Helen Zille, a proudly racist public figure, regularly reminds us that the road to building a nonracial South Africa envisaged in the Constitution will be long and tortuous.
For a very long time, being black automatically conferred upon a large part of humanity the default dishonour of being subhuman. A number of racist experiments were carried out in Africa.
And for all the pain, according to Zille’s racist wisdom, Africans should be grateful. So, when Africans look back to how Cecil John Rhodes instituted a system stripping black workers naked and whipping them, they should be grateful that “not all was bad” after all.
When the colonial and apartheid governments stole land from indigenous people, killed and maimed them, there was an element of goodwill, we must understand.
When Africans and other nationalities around the world learn that their impoverishment can be traced back to the global slave trade that converted human beings into property that can be traded, they must always keep in mind that “not all was bad” about the system.
The descendants of the victims of Namibian genocide should understand that “not all was bad” when German General Lothar von Trotha ordered: “Shoot any Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle.”
For centuries, a whole body of literature was developed and peddled by racists to “prove” deeply-held white prejudices that black people were inherently inferior. They advocated, as Zille does in the twenty-first century, that colonialism was good for the subjugated.
In the words of former President Thabo Mbeki, “those whose minds have been corrupted by the disease of racism, accuse us, the black people of South Africa as being, by virtue of our Africanness and skin colour, lazy, liars, foul-smelling, diseased, corrupt, violent, amoral, sexually depraved, animalistic, savage – and rapist.”
Zille, who has also been corrupted by the disease of racism, has become the proponent of twenty-first century racism. Clearly, injecting Botox into the brain is dangerous.
The struggles against colonialism and apartheid were meant to reclaim the inherent dignity and equality of all human beings. People like Zille remind us that the struggle is far from over.
Steve Biko and his generation of thoughtful leaders countered racism by inculcating self-pride among black people. Having been subjugated over centuries black people needed to reject the imposed inferiority complex. There was no better place to start than the rehabilitation of the black person’s conscience. This was the first step to liberation.
As an identity, blackness or being African has a significant political meaning beyond race. In a politically civilised post-94 South Africa, black means triumph of the struggle against colonialism and apartheid. It means the restoration of pride of the previously dehumanised. It means black excellence has to be acknowledged and be accorded its rightful place because excellence is what it is regardless of race.
Black people who understand their historic duty to repair the damage inflicted upon them by years of colonialism and apartheid will do everything they can to fight the persistent claim made by colonial enthusiasts like Zille.
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