The Saturday Weekend Argus [April 5 2008] on its Issues page published two articles, No, Mr. Mbeki, telling the truth is not being racist by Bronwyn M

The Saturday Weekend Argus [April 5 2008] on its Issues page published two articles, No, Mr. Mbeki, telling the truth is not being racist by Bronwyn McIntosh; and Is SA crime a ‘race war’? by Rodney Warwick. The ideal situation, of course, would have been to publish different views on the issue, but as it is, the Weekend Argus chose to publish two articles of similar view at the same time.

I agree with Warwick—who we were told is completing his Ph.D in history through UCT—that ‘[t]he press can lead the way by encouraging public debate . . .’ on crime; but feel he grossly exaggerates when he says what is happening in SA is ‘similar to the late 19th century pogroms against Jews.’ In fact if I was Jewish I’d feel offended by the comparison. The major problem with Warwick’s article, even more than the tortured use of Niall Ferguson’s work in War of the World to support an unconvincing thesis, is the nauseating Oprahesque praxis of trauma assertiveness as means to win public regard.

Reading history one understands that Fascism begins with specious recovery of certain community values, cultural and otherwise; and nostalgia for the ‘better’ past. From there, the usual route is Gleichasaltung—the coordination of social institutes to reflect the ideology of the majority group. If I understand Warwick well, he seems to think that SA is in Gleichasaltung stage. He insinuates that the present South African government tacitly condones anti-white crime, because ‘anti-white crime suits ANC perfidy of preaching non-racialism but also espousing aggressive “Africanisation” and the demolition of white South African historical identity.’

I’m not a member of the ANC, and so cannot vouch for them; but my understanding of South African black politics is that it is actually the ANC that occupies the mean against extreme Pan Africanist position of most black political organization. In fact, I dare say, the ANC is currently loosing ground in black societies because it is seen as not being Africanist enough.

Further more Warwick is selective in his choice of crime examples to suit his thesis. Ask any reader of the Daily Voice or Sowetan, and they’ll tell you of more gruesome and sadist daily acts of black on black crime, far worse than the two chosen from ‘Afrikaans Sunday newspaper’ by Warwick. The truth of the matter is that, as much as black on white violence happens, it does so far less regularly than black on black violence. And there’s scant evidence even if that is racial motivated. Farm crimes are clearly premeditated as mostly some form of revenge, but the motive is usually more personal than racial.

In his analysis of history, Warwick, puts wrong construction almost in everything. He notes, hugger-mugger, the history of Congo. A slight peruse of Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost is enough introduction for the magnitude and horror of brutal Belgian colonialist rule in Congo, and how it prefigured the history of the country.

Warwick also compares the SA situation to Hep! Hep! riots that showed the depth of popular German anti-Semitism stimulated by hatred of successful Jews. He wants us to believe that SA criminal element is Khapers deployed for the pogroms. And to think we’re in a similar position as Rwandan era of Akuzu—the core of the concentric webs of political, economic, and military muscle and patronage that came to be known as Interrahamwe. All of it is baseless, mischievous and recklessly alarmist.

Crime in SA is bad, we all feel that way. White South Africans are only now waking up to how bad the situation really is. To most black people it has been a lifelong reality of tragic pain, which the coming of ANC government, with all its flaws, was the first to attempt to do anything about, though what its done is still not nearly enough. To most of us the ANC demonstrates a better record than all historic revolutionary parties for not permitting itself a discretionary exercise of power, but choosing to regulate itself more by Constitutional principles than demands of circumstances.

Warwick trespasses on the understanding of our country’s reality when he says ‘the de facto situation is that whites are under criminal siege explicitly because of their “race”’. And pushes our limit to a breaking point when he says ‘[i]t is illogical to judgementally link cultural groupings, let alone individuals, to their forefathers’ moral controversies, but shallowness of popular perception unfortunately ensures it is often inevitably.’ Further on he mockingly terms the past South African governments of prejudice a forced position on whites for their ‘radical survival option.’

Most of us, as the American journalist Sydney Harris once wrote, “believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.” But I’d have expected better from a PhD candidate; better use of facts to reconcile with reality, for one. As it is, Warwick will fit well in the field of historical romancers; he does such a superb job of arranging facts to fit his passions, something very endemic to colonialist self-flutters.

Unfortunately for him, real history demands coming to terms even with blighted parts as necessary steps towards regeneration. It could be his likes stand in the way of our true understand of ourselves as a real nation, and path to true reconciliation based in honesty. ‘Tis the measure of wise men to prefer things that are necessary to those convenient and desultory.

The challenge, as it is in our country after political democracy, is to find better ways for wealth redistribution to regress the scales, which in this country are tilted to favour the bias of white people even in this generation and others to come still until we level the fields. Think of a relay marathon where are upon one group has been given a head start at the expense of holding the other by oppressive means. You don’t by releasing the other from oppressive means alone level the field, because the truth of the matter is that one group has done more rounds than the other and closer to the prize. Justice demands that you elevate the other group to where the other already is by means of interference.

What we need most are means of rescuing ourselves from the mess we find ourselves in due to a combination of a lot of things, chief of which is deliberate impoverishment of one group of people for the promotion and hegemony of the other. If one thing should be clear to us by now is that, it is a very, very dangerous thing for all concerned to tilt the scales to the extent that others feel they’ve nothing to loose in the reign of chaos, which is what made SA produce such nihilistic and sadists criminals.