LAST week in Kliptown, Soweto, our government sponsored a two-day summit on social cohesion. It was another talk shop, another space to manufacture meaningless words and get a minister on the media for five minutes.
These buzzwords refer to no reality nor do they help us understand why, 18 years after 1994, there is no real change.
Every two years or so new words are created to hide the truth. We moved from the "two nations" of Mbeki to the "developmental state" of the pre-Polokwane coup and now the "second transition", which has become the "second phase" and now it's "social cohesion". Will it ever end? Words can't hide reality. There is a stark reality: South Africa remains a racist country, blacks suffer racism, poverty, landlessness and a host of evils.
The ANC has chosen not to end the apartheid reality for blacks, instead it has continued it, from housing to healthcare to education etc. Blacks get inferior public service, the ANC leaders have bought themselves out of blackness.
What is social cohesion? How can we even talk about cohesion when the reasons for social divisions and strife have not been addressed?
How can we be one happy society when on average a black man earns R2400 a month and a white man earns R19000! The people who must come together and be one are still stuck in master and slave relations.
But let's be clear, ending racism is not the burden of whites. We blacks are a majority who have suffered for centuries to create modern South Africa.
We must end racism and in this way also free whites from perpetual guilt and the god complex that comes from being our lords.
To demand whites treat blacks with dignity right now, amid these real inequalities, is to be unfair to whites. Oppressed people everywhere on Earth are treated with disdain, treated as rubbish. It's not being evil, it's the natural law of power.
Zapiro and Brett Murray will continue to depict President Zuma in racist ways as long as black reality allows it and I don't blame them, I blame the ANC. End black inferior status; don't give us RDP houses, bad education and keep us landless. Real social cohesion is possible only when the material conditions of blacks have been improved.
The real question we need to ask is this: What has the ANC done to end white racism and change the conditions of blacks in the past 18 years?
Once we answer this question honestly we shall see that any talk of social cohesion is a mere smokescreen to avoid accounting for the overwhelming mandate to serve the people.
We must ask: why must blacks undertake service delivery protests in a democracy they have voted for? We must ask: why give people rubber bullets not dialogue and services?
SA needs to learn to separate sense from nonsense. We need to learn the art of maintaining power used by the privileged. Each time the president is depicted negatively, the expectation is that the nation will support the ruling party out of rage and sympathy.
This reaction plays into the hands of the likes of Zapiro, but ironically also serves Zuma well. We saw the same mutual beneficial relationship between Malema and AfriForum.
Each time they took Malema to court for nonsense, the more popular he became, while AfriForum received media attention and membership.
These theatrics of art, president, cartoons and summits, ultimately exhaust the nation but primarily ensure that nothing changes. They are not real battles, they are undertaken to avoid real discussion about how the ANC manages racism.
ANC leaders have bought themselves out of blackness
LAST week in Kliptown, Soweto, our government sponsored a two-day summit on social cohesion. It was another talk shop, another space to manufacture meaningless words and get a minister on the media for five minutes.
These buzzwords refer to no reality nor do they help us understand why, 18 years after 1994, there is no real change.
Every two years or so new words are created to hide the truth. We moved from the "two nations" of Mbeki to the "developmental state" of the pre-Polokwane coup and now the "second transition", which has become the "second phase" and now it's "social cohesion". Will it ever end? Words can't hide reality. There is a stark reality: South Africa remains a racist country, blacks suffer racism, poverty, landlessness and a host of evils.
The ANC has chosen not to end the apartheid reality for blacks, instead it has continued it, from housing to healthcare to education etc. Blacks get inferior public service, the ANC leaders have bought themselves out of blackness.
What is social cohesion? How can we even talk about cohesion when the reasons for social divisions and strife have not been addressed?
How can we be one happy society when on average a black man earns R2400 a month and a white man earns R19000! The people who must come together and be one are still stuck in master and slave relations.
But let's be clear, ending racism is not the burden of whites. We blacks are a majority who have suffered for centuries to create modern South Africa.
We must end racism and in this way also free whites from perpetual guilt and the god complex that comes from being our lords.
To demand whites treat blacks with dignity right now, amid these real inequalities, is to be unfair to whites. Oppressed people everywhere on Earth are treated with disdain, treated as rubbish. It's not being evil, it's the natural law of power.
Zapiro and Brett Murray will continue to depict President Zuma in racist ways as long as black reality allows it and I don't blame them, I blame the ANC. End black inferior status; don't give us RDP houses, bad education and keep us landless. Real social cohesion is possible only when the material conditions of blacks have been improved.
The real question we need to ask is this: What has the ANC done to end white racism and change the conditions of blacks in the past 18 years?
Once we answer this question honestly we shall see that any talk of social cohesion is a mere smokescreen to avoid accounting for the overwhelming mandate to serve the people.
We must ask: why must blacks undertake service delivery protests in a democracy they have voted for? We must ask: why give people rubber bullets not dialogue and services?
SA needs to learn to separate sense from nonsense. We need to learn the art of maintaining power used by the privileged. Each time the president is depicted negatively, the expectation is that the nation will support the ruling party out of rage and sympathy.
This reaction plays into the hands of the likes of Zapiro, but ironically also serves Zuma well. We saw the same mutual beneficial relationship between Malema and AfriForum.
Each time they took Malema to court for nonsense, the more popular he became, while AfriForum received media attention and membership.
These theatrics of art, president, cartoons and summits, ultimately exhaust the nation but primarily ensure that nothing changes. They are not real battles, they are undertaken to avoid real discussion about how the ANC manages racism.
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