This was written on invitation from LitNet. The edited version was published by The Sunday Independent on April 11, 2010.
The ‘death’, ‘murder’ and/or ‘killing’ of Eugene Tereblanche will continue to court controversy, scorn and political grand standing for a foreseeable future. The central role this incident will be playing in the emerging race-charged political discourse with its famous epicentre being Julius Malema cannot be underestimated irrespective of what the political pundits want us to believe. It is the accompanying silences (especially those of class, race and gender) to the discourse that South Africa should take a stand to be both loud and path finding in terms of dealing with its racial past.
The era of race-transcending leadership (that is leadership that never forgets about the significance of race but refuses to be confined to its demonic dictates as manifest in blatant discrimination and dispossession of man’s only valuable asset; humanity) did not begin and end with Nelson Mandela. It is very much a responsibility of this and future generations as it should have been that of past South African leaders.
The spirit of Hendrik Biebouw when he shouted ‘I shall not leave, I am an Afrikaner, even if the Landrost beats me to death or puts me in jail. I shall not, nor will be silent’ as well as that of Dr Anton Rupert when he declared in a 1975 lecture at the University of Pretoria that ‘the Afrikaner is essentially African ...and their cultural identity that has been shaped over more than three hundred years, also carry the stamp of Africa...the cultural and spiritual assets of our ancestors are a legacy that may not just be bequeathed; it has to be acquired anew by every generation’ needs to be reinterpreted through the emerging race-transcending lens of leadership.
In his seminal I am an African speech President Mbeki declares that ‘the Constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes an unequivocal statement that we refuse to accept that our Africanness shall be defined by our race, colour, gender or historical origin’. This declaration echoed Pixley ka Seme in 1911 when he said ‘ there is today amongst all races and men a general desire for progress, and for cooperation, because cooperation will facilitate and secure that progress. The demon of racialism, the aberrations of inter-tribal feuds...must be buried and forgotten’. The Africanness referred to here is analogous to the Afrikanerness of Biebouw and Rupert.
The non-racist and afri-belonging heritage entrenched by the ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it’ post 1994 democratic breakthrough did not mean that we should believe in false integration that manufactures ‘black souls in white skins’ whilst monumenting separateness in terms of national identity. The Steve Biko warning that ‘the myth of integration must be cracked and killed because it makes people believe that something is done when in actual fact the artificial integrated circles are soporific on the blacks and provide a vague satisfaction for the guilt-stricken whites’ has never been relevant than it is today. Franchise granting with separate places of worship, entertainment, learning, economic access opportunities, collective bargaining as well as politicking does not build national cohesion, but instead breed ‘nation-states without nations’.
It is in this false integratedness that we should contextualise the responses to the Eugene Terreblanche murder and understand its meaning to society. The race-based template within which we are packaging our situations has now become the standards with which our public discourse is managed. William Wilberforce has cautioned that we should ‘guard against the temptation, to which we are all susceptible, of lowering our standards to match our lives, rather that raising our lives to match our standards’. The headlines, supposedly driven by the chronic and insatiable appetite for making sales targets by SA’s mainstream media is lowering the bar of discourse on this matter. It is this trend that has failed to understand the Rector of Free State University when he decided to simply treat the reitz students from a ‘parent perspective’.
The dishonesty with which this criminal act has been approached by social coalitions, particularly those organised politically, is a symptom of a deeper cancer within the South African society. The Terreblanche death is fast exposing the hidden worst about ourselves; our inability to treat cross-racial crime for what it is and not what we imagine it to be. The actions of the murder charged boys are reflective of the moribund crime fighting initiatives that deal with farm killings. The race induced holocaust mentality that is predominant amongst the far-right (race criteria) is crippling our law enforcement agencies’ capacity to deal with crime non-racially.
Notwithstanding the polarisation of the environment by the somewhat justifiable Julius Malema restitution crusade that seeks to address ‘matters arising’ from the CODESA settlement, is also quaking an already unstable race relations environment. The yet to be defined effects of the global recession on the Afrikaners with a concretising redefinition of the political and economic landscape in favour of a ‘black majority’ as well as a growth in confidence towards the rule of law by a growing ‘white’ civil society movement that is in the main Biebouw type Afrikaner driven is creating a rights culture that is uncharacteristically reported as mainly anti-black government instead of democratic maturity.
This effective use of democratic institutions and CODESA created independencies of the judiciary aligned agencies create a condition where ‘the former sinners, whose previous work was of little interest or an object of ridicule to the mass media, are suddenly elevated to prominence and become new victims of some undefined ‘oppression’ and ‘suppression’. The environment seems to be accelerating the movement of ‘struggle defectors’, ‘informers’, ‘erstwhile oppressors’ and ‘assorted other opportunists’ into centre stage as ‘human rights activists’ expunged from the ‘historical context’ legitimising their new found ‘victimhood’. The extent to which this entrenches a democratic culture without ‘sustaining’ the subconscious ‘swaart gevaar’ political mobilisation path is an intellectual exercise the Afriforum must honestly engage in.
The preoccupation with the ‘kill the boer’ song, albeit with some degree of legitimacy when narrowly contextualised and expunged from the informing context, creates an atmosphere that can only be governed through the tolerance of each other rather than a reconciled populace. The absence of knowledge about each other’s history and struggles creates a vacuum in society that can be exploited by gladiatorial court cases seeking to establish new historical reference points to justify ‘separately considered’ agendas and maverick political grand standing contests to foreground ‘subjugated histories’ thus legitimising emerging trends as ‘matters arising’ from the 1994 political settlement.
These states of affairs procure for a Mandelisque type of leadership, a leadership that elevates the exigencies of nation building above those of affiliatory coalitions. Terreblanche’s death should be seen more as an opportunity to sharpen the non-racial discourse and elevate more towards a class consolidating discourse. Ibhunu should be defined in class terms rather than race terms. The 20 year old democratic space defined from the release of Nelson Mandela requires an honest audit in terms of how far has this democracy changed the lives of all South Africans. As we bid the last farewell to Eugene Terreblanche we should usher in an era of refusing the tendency he represented and replacing it with one that accepts socio-political discourse, no matter how unpalatable and discomforting such a discourse is.
Our context must instruct us that ‘the past is all that makes the present coherent and further that the past will remain horrible for as long as we refuse to accept it honestly’, we should thus make this circumstance our ‘enlightened witness’ within which the ‘tyranny of separate but equal consciousness’ should be obliterated.
The question remains, ‘wat nou’?
• The newfound political impetus through civil society movements such as the Afriforum should decisively define its relevance within the emerging non-racial tradition South Africa is busy building. This must include programmes where these ‘race-based’ or ‘ethnic’ formations start to have cross-racial programmes thus demonstrating their genuineness in the non-racialism building project.
• The need to redefine the ‘threatening’ lyrics of some of the liberation movements ‘war songs’ to be in tandem with the reigning non-racism building project. The ‘metaphoric’ nature of these lyrics needs to be decoded into layman’s language without losing their historical and obvious political mobilisation appeal.
• Liberation movements must also acknowledge the fact that some of the ‘struggle song’ lyrics will generate a response from an uninformed and ‘struggle’ decontexualised youth. The fact that emerging journalistic talent is in the forefront of creating history decontexualised public discourse coupled with a declining politicisation of the youth at the altar of ‘bling’ and ‘crass materialism’ as well as a search for political martyrdom by ‘Afrikaner youth’ will create a fertile environment for civil strife.
• The growing romanticisation of Anglo-Boer war generals, MK cadres that executed brave acts such as that of Solomon Mahlangu and the celebrated reception the ‘Terreblanche murder charged two’ has received needs to be decisively discouraged by an almost ‘umshini wam vigour’ thus elevating the importance of human life in society. The fact that it was Terreblanche who was murdered should not translate into a ‘justified’ murder but a despicable criminal act.
• Whilst it is true that the struggle songs, the historical place names such as Pretoria and historical monuments that celebrate ‘white man’s truimph’ over African resistance to land dispossession by the then invading ‘kommandos’ are important artefacts defining our historical path; the need to create a socio-political space that respects these is more urgent. Symbolic and politician driven ‘toenaderings’ require an outright endorsement by religious, cultural and issue based civil society movements as well as organised business.
• Capital from such societies should resource the non-racial discourse, a pre-occupation with invoking Nelson Mandela as an embodiment of ‘approved black leadership’ will create a backlash with catastrophic nation-building consequences.
Notwithstanding the above, may Eugene Terreblanche’s soul rest in peace as we are crafting our fragile national soul.
The ‘death’, ‘murder’ and/or ‘killing’ of Eugene Tereblanche will continue to court controversy, scorn and political grand standing for a foreseeable future. The central role this incident will be playing in the emerging race-charged political discourse with its famous epicentre being Julius Malema cannot be underestimated irrespective of what the political pundits want us to believe. It is the accompanying silences (especially those of class, race and gender) to the discourse that South Africa should take a stand to be both loud and path finding in terms of dealing with its racial past.
The era of race-transcending leadership (that is leadership that never forgets about the significance of race but refuses to be confined to its demonic dictates as manifest in blatant discrimination and dispossession of man’s only valuable asset; humanity) did not begin and end with Nelson Mandela. It is very much a responsibility of this and future generations as it should have been that of past South African leaders.
The spirit of Hendrik Biebouw when he shouted ‘I shall not leave, I am an Afrikaner, even if the Landrost beats me to death or puts me in jail. I shall not, nor will be silent’ as well as that of Dr Anton Rupert when he declared in a 1975 lecture at the University of Pretoria that ‘the Afrikaner is essentially African ...and their cultural identity that has been shaped over more than three hundred years, also carry the stamp of Africa...the cultural and spiritual assets of our ancestors are a legacy that may not just be bequeathed; it has to be acquired anew by every generation’ needs to be reinterpreted through the emerging race-transcending lens of leadership.
In his seminal I am an African speech President Mbeki declares that ‘the Constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes an unequivocal statement that we refuse to accept that our Africanness shall be defined by our race, colour, gender or historical origin’. This declaration echoed Pixley ka Seme in 1911 when he said ‘ there is today amongst all races and men a general desire for progress, and for cooperation, because cooperation will facilitate and secure that progress. The demon of racialism, the aberrations of inter-tribal feuds...must be buried and forgotten’. The Africanness referred to here is analogous to the Afrikanerness of Biebouw and Rupert.
The non-racist and afri-belonging heritage entrenched by the ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it’ post 1994 democratic breakthrough did not mean that we should believe in false integration that manufactures ‘black souls in white skins’ whilst monumenting separateness in terms of national identity. The Steve Biko warning that ‘the myth of integration must be cracked and killed because it makes people believe that something is done when in actual fact the artificial integrated circles are soporific on the blacks and provide a vague satisfaction for the guilt-stricken whites’ has never been relevant than it is today. Franchise granting with separate places of worship, entertainment, learning, economic access opportunities, collective bargaining as well as politicking does not build national cohesion, but instead breed ‘nation-states without nations’.
It is in this false integratedness that we should contextualise the responses to the Eugene Terreblanche murder and understand its meaning to society. The race-based template within which we are packaging our situations has now become the standards with which our public discourse is managed. William Wilberforce has cautioned that we should ‘guard against the temptation, to which we are all susceptible, of lowering our standards to match our lives, rather that raising our lives to match our standards’. The headlines, supposedly driven by the chronic and insatiable appetite for making sales targets by SA’s mainstream media is lowering the bar of discourse on this matter. It is this trend that has failed to understand the Rector of Free State University when he decided to simply treat the reitz students from a ‘parent perspective’.
The dishonesty with which this criminal act has been approached by social coalitions, particularly those organised politically, is a symptom of a deeper cancer within the South African society. The Terreblanche death is fast exposing the hidden worst about ourselves; our inability to treat cross-racial crime for what it is and not what we imagine it to be. The actions of the murder charged boys are reflective of the moribund crime fighting initiatives that deal with farm killings. The race induced holocaust mentality that is predominant amongst the far-right (race criteria) is crippling our law enforcement agencies’ capacity to deal with crime non-racially.
Notwithstanding the polarisation of the environment by the somewhat justifiable Julius Malema restitution crusade that seeks to address ‘matters arising’ from the CODESA settlement, is also quaking an already unstable race relations environment. The yet to be defined effects of the global recession on the Afrikaners with a concretising redefinition of the political and economic landscape in favour of a ‘black majority’ as well as a growth in confidence towards the rule of law by a growing ‘white’ civil society movement that is in the main Biebouw type Afrikaner driven is creating a rights culture that is uncharacteristically reported as mainly anti-black government instead of democratic maturity.
This effective use of democratic institutions and CODESA created independencies of the judiciary aligned agencies create a condition where ‘the former sinners, whose previous work was of little interest or an object of ridicule to the mass media, are suddenly elevated to prominence and become new victims of some undefined ‘oppression’ and ‘suppression’. The environment seems to be accelerating the movement of ‘struggle defectors’, ‘informers’, ‘erstwhile oppressors’ and ‘assorted other opportunists’ into centre stage as ‘human rights activists’ expunged from the ‘historical context’ legitimising their new found ‘victimhood’. The extent to which this entrenches a democratic culture without ‘sustaining’ the subconscious ‘swaart gevaar’ political mobilisation path is an intellectual exercise the Afriforum must honestly engage in.
The preoccupation with the ‘kill the boer’ song, albeit with some degree of legitimacy when narrowly contextualised and expunged from the informing context, creates an atmosphere that can only be governed through the tolerance of each other rather than a reconciled populace. The absence of knowledge about each other’s history and struggles creates a vacuum in society that can be exploited by gladiatorial court cases seeking to establish new historical reference points to justify ‘separately considered’ agendas and maverick political grand standing contests to foreground ‘subjugated histories’ thus legitimising emerging trends as ‘matters arising’ from the 1994 political settlement.
These states of affairs procure for a Mandelisque type of leadership, a leadership that elevates the exigencies of nation building above those of affiliatory coalitions. Terreblanche’s death should be seen more as an opportunity to sharpen the non-racial discourse and elevate more towards a class consolidating discourse. Ibhunu should be defined in class terms rather than race terms. The 20 year old democratic space defined from the release of Nelson Mandela requires an honest audit in terms of how far has this democracy changed the lives of all South Africans. As we bid the last farewell to Eugene Terreblanche we should usher in an era of refusing the tendency he represented and replacing it with one that accepts socio-political discourse, no matter how unpalatable and discomforting such a discourse is.
Our context must instruct us that ‘the past is all that makes the present coherent and further that the past will remain horrible for as long as we refuse to accept it honestly’, we should thus make this circumstance our ‘enlightened witness’ within which the ‘tyranny of separate but equal consciousness’ should be obliterated.
The question remains, ‘wat nou’?
• The newfound political impetus through civil society movements such as the Afriforum should decisively define its relevance within the emerging non-racial tradition South Africa is busy building. This must include programmes where these ‘race-based’ or ‘ethnic’ formations start to have cross-racial programmes thus demonstrating their genuineness in the non-racialism building project.
• The need to redefine the ‘threatening’ lyrics of some of the liberation movements ‘war songs’ to be in tandem with the reigning non-racism building project. The ‘metaphoric’ nature of these lyrics needs to be decoded into layman’s language without losing their historical and obvious political mobilisation appeal.
• Liberation movements must also acknowledge the fact that some of the ‘struggle song’ lyrics will generate a response from an uninformed and ‘struggle’ decontexualised youth. The fact that emerging journalistic talent is in the forefront of creating history decontexualised public discourse coupled with a declining politicisation of the youth at the altar of ‘bling’ and ‘crass materialism’ as well as a search for political martyrdom by ‘Afrikaner youth’ will create a fertile environment for civil strife.
• The growing romanticisation of Anglo-Boer war generals, MK cadres that executed brave acts such as that of Solomon Mahlangu and the celebrated reception the ‘Terreblanche murder charged two’ has received needs to be decisively discouraged by an almost ‘umshini wam vigour’ thus elevating the importance of human life in society. The fact that it was Terreblanche who was murdered should not translate into a ‘justified’ murder but a despicable criminal act.
• Whilst it is true that the struggle songs, the historical place names such as Pretoria and historical monuments that celebrate ‘white man’s truimph’ over African resistance to land dispossession by the then invading ‘kommandos’ are important artefacts defining our historical path; the need to create a socio-political space that respects these is more urgent. Symbolic and politician driven ‘toenaderings’ require an outright endorsement by religious, cultural and issue based civil society movements as well as organised business.
• Capital from such societies should resource the non-racial discourse, a pre-occupation with invoking Nelson Mandela as an embodiment of ‘approved black leadership’ will create a backlash with catastrophic nation-building consequences.
Notwithstanding the above, may Eugene Terreblanche’s soul rest in peace as we are crafting our fragile national soul.
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