RACISM IS A BLIGHT ON THE CIVILIZATION THEATRE: POWER PROPELS IT

South Africa has been experiencing a series of tensions that may be eating on its social fabric. This is due to the continued use of demeaning vocabulary aimed at a section of its people that were called ‘kaffirs’. Whilst the use of ‘kaffir’ is an abhorrence to humanity, it would seem its use has now assumed a particular role. It is also noteworthy to observe how emotionally charged   the response of society, and policy makers in particular, has been to this phenomenon and/or practice. But emotional policy response alone has not been enough, a social justice anchored response to the real and underlying issues is necessary. This article will argue that, the use of the 'kaffir' word is in fact a form of power display on the human civilization theatre designed to sustain a continuum of subjugation.

The disintegration of formal, legal and economic apartheid since 1994 has still not dealt with racism as a manifestation of apartheid power over its primary victims; Bantu-Blacks. Notwithstanding the two post-formal-legal-apartheid decades that have passed since the famous “never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another” by Nelson Mandela, racism as an artefact of a power that has been, still grows in its stubbornness. Racism has since been able to represent itself as a theatre within which asymmetries of apartheid-earned-power could be on display, both in emotion and hegemonic terms. The chronic use of the ‘kaffir word’ by performers in the theatre of power has in fact repositioned ‘non-kaffirness’ as a historical and hegemonic power, over the then ‘kaffirs’; now affectionately redefined black, and Africans in particular.

 

The inability of policy makers and the might of the state to be deployed as a bulwark with which this display of ‘power’ could be both opposed and removed, has made it one of the remaining monuments of ‘non-kaffir’ power over the erstwhile “kaffirs” in the then apartheid operating nomenclature. The continued use of the word, the sensational reporting about it, its predominance in the social cohesion discourse, and the silences of dominant coalitions known to be defenders of the then non-‘kaffir’ interests and status quo, makes perpetrators to in fact wield the power of their transgression over those that are victimized by the continued use of the term. In fact, there seems to be a conspiratorial assurance that its victims know about its use on them, in order to remind them who they are in the broader scheme of 'a hidden  social hierarchy'.

 

If we take the theatre as a model, racism will rely on live performances and unwitting live participants to present the experience of its imagined power, power with which the perpetrators exert a phyco-social power over the victims. In this theatre, those ‘privileged with the power to use the ‘kaffir’ word in concept and context, are in fact part of a ‘broader group’. Yes, in the ‘group’ there may well be many who do not agree with the ‘growing few’ who are by the way products of a previously constructed ‘group agreement’ at a particular point and/or phase in South Africa’s history. Within this ‘broader group’, there will be those ‘who simply have no conscience, lack a sense of social right and wrong, and driven by a self-interest that sees a change in the status quo as a change of the disposition of the self against the ‘kaffir’ group.

 

It has actually been proven that a significant fraction of the group is generally not swayed by the agreed social norming arrangements the post-1994 South Africa has defined to govern human co-existence. In fact, within the ‘broader group’ you have a ‘non-kaffir’ constituency that is sensitive ‘to opinions of others about justice and decent behavior’ as it directly recalibrates their self-interest. Given the historical connotations ascribed to ‘conquering the other and thus have rights of the spoils of whatever war, the understanding of this right has created amongst some in the ‘broader group’, a belief system that is reinforced by the material display of where the ‘spoils of war’ are still concentrated and controlled to sustain the very power. In the end, a whole is incomplete without its fractions, unless it discards the fraction to become a new whole.

 

The South African society may identify racism as an important priority of its problems, when it has in fact become a nominal risk. It is in the infrastructure that perpetuates its thriving, and the spatial injustices it has been able to parade itself through, that society needs to focus on. As a performance, racism uses the demeaning of the Bantu-Black in sensational and predictable ways to communicate subjugation, a caste of a special type, and entrenchment of the ‘apartheid inspired pecking order’. This communique to Bantu-Blacks appeals to their emotion out of which their response, and based on the ‘power’ they have amassed, despite it being shared with all who live in South Africa, falls short of focusing on the systemic issues that require attention, and thereby obliterating racism as a manifestation of power. This has bred irrationality in policy-making where it matters.

The irrationality that accompanies policies developed in the context of an emotional outburst instructs the fundamental assumptions underlying what would be a long term policy. For instance, the focus on being part of non-black businesses yielded a breed of economic empowerment that does not encourage the establishment of new black businesses that are independent of non-black businesses. The preoccupation in changing the ownership demographics of what is existing has significantly limited the creativity of blacks to view empowerment as an opportunity to establish 100% black owned businesses, with value chains structured to encourage industrialization and a supplier consciousness biased towards true empowerment from a self-generated power source. The post-democratic breakthrough emotion, generally informed by a somewhat fictitious belief that the CODESA settlement was a treaty and not a political accord, attracted policy inputs that inherently undermined the intents of the very empowerment policies.

 

The strategy of those in the broader group and specifically separate development apologists that commit acts of racial subjugation and ideological violence on ‘kaffirs’ is to leverage fear and uncertainty about the new found freedom and opportunity for ‘kaffirs’ to assert themselves in an otherwise black empowering context. This fear makes empowerment to be etched on distribution and never from whence power is generated. The imposition of false group values and ideals through a narrative that does not call bantu-blacks ‘kaffirs’ but essentially ‘kaffirinates’ them to a level where the ‘kaffir’ word need no mentioning in spaces ‘reserved’ for ‘non-kaffirs’, makes those that say the word ‘narrative catalysts away from its systemic existence. It is in the pathology of racism that these continued use of the ‘kaffir’ word by those that are brave, and their euphemisms in the institutionalized narratives dominating the public discourse, that the asymmetric power of racism is in various funded theatres of South Africa, a house full affair.

The feeling that Adam Catzavelos had when he was at a beach with ‘no kaffir in sight’ might be a feeling that has pockets of existence in boardrooms and dinner tables; we all know that ‘another’ from his ilk, saw monkeys at a beach. His verbalization of the feeling might also be a common nomenclature that does not find its way into social media platforms. It should also be mentioned that on its opposite end there are variously used words such as ‘amakula’, ‘amalau’, ‘amajananda’, ‘amabunu’ and many other demeaning words to characterize and/or typify ‘non-bantu-blacks’. These words are found in various dialects, and are all aimed at creating theatres within which the asymmetric power of racism could be in perpetual performance. It is what constitutes the power to classify which we should work on changing; a hegemonic regime change.

 

Nelson Mandela warns that “no one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People… learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite”.The power to teach is directly related to the power to curriculate, and the power to curriculate is an outcome of an institutionalized content and theorization, and theorization means availability of resources to write, print and distribute. Racism has a value chain, and these value chains are anchored on economic and ideational power. Racism is therefore not only a blight on the human conscience, but a disfigurement of any civilization.