All Africans Now ?

I remember listening to presedent Mbeki's I am an African speech, given at the occasion of the adoption of the Constitutional Assembly of the new South African Constitution, and thinking in excitement, we'll all be Africans now. My reaction was confirmed by the chattering class when in dissecting praised the speech to the mountains. But a few years down the line the South African rainbow African dream seem to be buckling on its structural faults.

What got me wary later on when I thought about Mbeki's speech is the way he tried to minimise South African racial complexities by mythylogising his identity, and thus of all Africans. Subsequently the myth overwhelmed reality; it became fashionable to identify oneself with previously ignored people. Everyone suddenly became aware of the Khoi-San blood running in their veins, even those in the past who identified themselves more with Europe or black tribal imperialism.

For instance the Afrikaner journalist, Max Du Preez, in his book Pale Native described himself thus: "I am a native of this land, but unlike most other natives, I am pale. The tongue of my
heart and my soul is a tongue born in Africa and called after Africa, but after many
decades of abuse it is now resented by many as the tongue of alien invaders." I still believe that this emphasis on our African roots a good thing; better late than never, but it must be based on facts not noble lies.

Mbeki and Du Preez, in different ways, wanted us to acknowledge the fundamental truth of our mixed blood. Scientific studies, especially genetics, tell us that “The idea that we constitute 'races' is now unquestionably a myth. . . (Prof Wilmot James; Cape Times, Thursday, March 22, 2007). But if recent reports of rising Right Wing sects and radical left tendencies among blacks is anything to go by things are not as cosy in real South Africa. Mbeki too is being accused of having made a volte-face.

Recently, in his Letter at ANC Today, (http://www.anc.org.za/) Mbeki raised the need for frank discussion of “whether we have the courage to engage in a truth and reconciliation process even with regard to the challenge of openly confronting the cancer of deeply dehumanising racist stereotypes that developed over many centuries.” This letter, titled, Freedom from racism – a fundamental human right, used what most white people in our country see as a harsh tone than the call to live up to something shaped by Hesiodean myth of his I am an African speech. He was no longer the Mbeki who fashioned his identity in the mead of underdog heroic deeds and immemorial customs, from sacred rites and solemn traditions.

Needless to say Mbeki found more accommodation in black communities to an extent that Achille Mbembe, a senior researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, writing in the Sunday Times (01 April 2007) threw down the gauntlet in his very competent article tittled “Culture of Mutual Resentment Precludes Nonracial Future” (www.sundaytimes.co.za).

Most white people, even the likes of Du Preez, believe Mbeki has made a volte-face from his wish of a multicultural community of common loyalty, and a shared history in South Africa. Hence you find Du Preez asking towards the end of his book; “There's just one big unaswered question: What on earth happened to the charming, smiling, generous, warm, straightforward Thabo Mbeki we got to know in Dakar?” Is this founded in reality or just shades of white fears Mbeki is talking about in his letter?

I'm one of those who believed that Mbeki's perceived harsh tone is not the results of a change of mind in wanting to fix our sights on the vision of a South African future that's reinvented by our collective identity. In fact I truly believe he wants to deepen this call to go beyond our ancestral commonality into addressing our psychological fears also. Hence he asks in the letter; “why are the Whites so determined to frighten themselves! The answer of course is that they have taken no such decision. Rather, the problem is that entrenched racism dictates that justification must be found for the persisting white fears of 'die swart gevaar'”.

It is no secret that under the spell of relativist postmodernist theory, and despairing failures of the Socialist experiments of the twentieth century, erstwhile progressive people tended to seek intellectual refuge in identity politics, something that makes them resemble the old conservatives of old. Indeed Mbeki and Du Pleeze make strange bedfellows in that they fall in this category. Both say are struggling against embedded prejudices, and that their perpetual struggle has always been against the negative role played by the media in sidelining and covering, if not altogether eliminating undesirable news. Yet they find themselves shouting at each other from opposite banks. Does this denotes the failure of multiculturalism in our country?

Most black South Africans feel the majority of our whites have not been too accommodating of the new South Africa. Let us take the example of building a stadium for the 2000 World Cup here in Cape Town. Greenpoint has been chosen as a designated area for the stadium as the result there has been a lot of hullabaloo, from the residents of the area, who are white mostly white, that the stadium will increase crime and what have you in the area. They even argue Judas' ignoble concern that the money could have been of better use in building houses for the poor—preferable somewhere else far from Greenpoint I presume.

Multiculturalism, it seems, in recent years has acted only to divide the population into factions of competing ethnicities who feel they have nothing in common with each other. The chaos of the twenty first century is largely based on this division. As nice sounding the phrase 'unity in diversity' might be it requires the kind of tolerance most of us just seem not to posses. Multiculturalism presupposes diversity, and diversity demands solidarity of values, chief of which is tolerance. The question then is not whether we're all Africans, but that as diverse Africans we can learn to live in respect of each other?

Sharing a geographical sphere and political inheritance does not make us a nation. Neither does sharing same ancestors because few Boers and Xhosas had Khoisan wives or chattels. I'm sure the president's intentions of wanting to inject common energy in our collective identity was based on noble motives but it was conscious myth creation.

Myth is not an entirely bad bases for nation building. But conscious myths are a different thing altogether from the myths that emerge from the unconscious history (fears and longings) of a people. Unconscious myths convey truth because they are a residue of life and the after-image of suffering. Conscious myths, however, are instruments of human purpose, of spin-doctoring.
Plato believed that truth is the business of philosophy, but knew also that it is rhetoric, not philosophy, that moves the crowds. Mbeki's I am an African speech was chiefly poetic rhetoric. Among the rhetorical devices of politicians we must distinguish noble lies. The speech, with all its intents, was a noble lie whose real sentiments are betrayed by the brass angst of Freedom from racism – a fundamental human right letter. Perhaps this letter should have preceded the speech not the other way around.

In the Mbeki is irritated by the manner those who are ostensible inheritors of progressive rational Englitement tradition smugle racism under the banner of preserving cultural values and standards. This is the common thing in South Africa. South Africans are in urgent need of true integration so as to cease existing in different poles of same geographical area.

Steve Biko, in his book, I Write What I Like, said, “If by integration you understand breakthrough into white society by blacks, an assimilation and acceptance of blacks into an already established set of norms and codes of behaviour by whites, then yes I am against it.” Integration and multiculturalism has to mean much more than blacks acting white if it has to have true meaning. It is time also for the white community to understand and learn to accept black culture if our country has any hope of forging a real nation.