In his first speech to Parliament in 1994, 'multi-racial' South Africa's First President, Nelson Mandela, dedicated few seconds to deal with fundamental symbols of abaNTU subjugation that continue to exist to date. In his speech he said "We must end racism in the workplace as part of our common offensive against racism in general. No more should words like Kaffirs, Hottentots, Coolies, Boy, Girl and Baas be part of our vocabulary". His choice of 'workplace' might have been his view of society from the prism of abaNTU, that it is a 'workplace' to them more than a 'country of birth', or its main productive areas sees them as visiting workers from 'homelands', and thus 'workers'. Their citizenship, though restored to 'vote' is still reliant on an ability to get an 'employee' number or 'section 10' stamp of a special type, in this our 'dual economy' State.
Whilst it is equally important to reflect on all subjugation words in the quotation, it is the Boy, Girl and Baas which thrived in a context where the use of Kaffir was allowed, that still permeates even the post Mandela 'no more' wall. These words created a social hierarchy with 'Kaffirs' as a social base out of which 'boys and girls' could be 'harvested' for the economic and material benefit of this article's proverbial 'Baas Johan'.
Before the analysis continues, it is important to create proper context of what 'Baas Johan' is as a concept and phenomenon. In facile terms 'Baas' is an Afrikaner word meaning 'boss'. In its literal sense the word can be used to refer to any person that occupies a position that could be designated a 'boss' title. It is thus not uncommon to still find in South African society people still affectionately calling their 'bosses' 'baas' and/or 'my baas'. It defines workplace hierarchies that would be found in many a nomenclature the world over. It has also found vernacular equivalents such as 'umlungu wami', 'lekgowa laka', and 'my lanie' to denote its pure hierarchical version. These are 'non-racially' applied, the are abaNTU 'baases' who embrace being called such.
'Baas Johan' is on the other hand a concept that define a different relationship between the one being called a 'baas' and the one 'expected' or 'regulated' to say 'baas Johan'. In this context 'Baas Johan' does not have a workplace hierarchy but a social hierarchy connotation. It actually also has a feminine gender equivalent of 'missies', and levels to accommodate age with 'klein baas' and 'klein missies' referring to children and/or the non-adult 'baas Johan and missies'. In the hierarchy, the social position of 'baas and missies' is institutionalised as a reality whose impact defined social and economic relations beyond its micro-managed use. It was in fact a concept, if you refused to say it, you would attract arrest for refusing to accept its implied intent on you.
In South Africa it facilitated the ease of accepting the racial hierarchy that defined economic and power relations in all aspects of human co-existence. It dehumanised sections of the population to a level where an entire race group became a caste for use and abuse by those placed at 'higher levels' above the caste. In the South African caste hierarchies, abaNTU were the 'grass-to-be-trampled-upon' caste by all that were differently defined in the social hierarchy.
This hierarchy could not make sense if it was not engineered to manifest as normal for 'higher placed' human creeds. To this effect, it had to be socially engineered through human settlements that would resemble 'boy and girl' storage facilities placed in conurbations supportive to a socially hierarchised 'labour supply' value chain. The education of abaNTU would also be restricted to those trades that sustain the social hierarchy. Patterns of capital ownership, especially in collateralising terms, with land as the apex collateral, had to undergird the entrenchment of the hierarchy beyond the need for hierarchy enforcement. The imagination of those in a lower caste had to be engineered to a level where anyone that seeks to imagine abaNTU outside set parameters had to first be rebellious in mindset to the status quo before actual imagination could start.
In this reimagination of self, those engineered to lower caste find themselves in an antagonistic relationship with whatever represents 'the Baas Johan' phenomenon , and in a perpetual strife to 'radically transform' it at its core, and hoping to fracture its philosophical foundations. Naturally, in any hierarchy there would be outliers that would make it difficult for any ceiling to constrain them, these would take full advantage of within caste hierarchies and became miniature 'Baas Johans' in the image of the 'modelled Baas Johan'. Their leadership attributes, generally attuning to what obtains and works in the financed and legally empowered social hierarchy, will be reflective to 'Baas Johanism' to a level where 'Baas Johanism' becomes a standard upon which 'miniature 'Baas Johans' get legitimation and 'social acceptance and reward' from a 'Baas Johan' social base.
In his speech Nelson Mandela referred to the 'Baas' in 'Baas Johanism' and not the 'Baas' as in the 'Afrikaans Woordeboek' otherwise called a dictionary in English. In fact, it is highly arguable that Nelson Mandela and all that he represented approved of the importance and necessity of the 'woordeboek' Baas. Baas Johanism is thus about the subjugation of the human in abaNTU or those seen below 'Baas Johan'. It is about dispossessing them of what is, and in the generally skewed cognition of 'Baas Johan', believed to be deserving only to 'Baas Johan' at all his levels including feminine gender. In occupation and economic participation terms this permeated to job reservations, in social ills terms it reserves the right to be forgiven and rehabilitated to the 'Baas Johan' human creed.
What has further made 'Baas Johanism' a social tragedy is its unintended consequence of making the 'non-abaNTU' that were classified above abaNTU and yet still called what is in the Mandela 'no mores', 'coolies' and 'hottentots' to assume a 'Baas Johanism' of a special type. They found themselves in a cultural preservation struggle to aspire to be outside the 'Baas Johan' created caste and yet somehow enjoy the 'near Baas Johan' advantages, and in unfortunate ways excluding to abaNTU, or seeing abaNTU in a 'BaasJohanist' manner. God forbid, the Phoenix debacle in the aftermath of the Zuma arrest is not an extreme manifestation of a settled in 'dehumanisation' of the abaNTU as a lasting dividend to the 'Phoenix Social Base' from the 'BaasJohanism' investment made by system.
How do we change Baas Johanism is a challenge that should be taken up by all South Africans. It developed in a context that we have all agreed was a crime against humanity. Its manifestations are akin to a socio-economic-cide of a type closest to the Hitlerist genocide of trying to wipe generational hopes and imaginations. Its capacity to tolerate 'Bass Johanist' incompetence simply because there is a consensus to remove from State Owned Entities non-'Baas Johanism' compliant 'abaNTUs' should be rejected. The spatial planning initiatives of the State should as a standard be outlawed and be stripped of its 'Baas Johanist' elements as manifest the 'reincarnation of labour reserves' and the recreation of such as 'Baas Johan' produced commodities consumption centres without an undergirding economic base.
Outside of the racism that instructed 'Baas Johanism', developed a political economy whose reach and impact is stubbornly choking the productive capacities of South Africa. There is evidence that exclusion of the majority in the production side of the economy has created in them a 'it-is-not-our-economy' attitude that yields disrespect to its infrastructure and need to have it sustained and supported, unless in 'funeral-emotional-terms' observed in the cleaning of rubble post the KZN and Gauteng upheavals.
There are murmurings of a socio-economic CODESA in the country. It might be potentially initiated because of a preponderance of a pliant leadership core to manage the temperature inside such a CODESA to shift the structure of the economy to manageable degrees and buy another 25 years of gradualism unattached to variables dictating the need for change. At this CODESA, a definition of what are the attributes of this 'Baas Johanism' are, and what should in structural terms constitute it eradication should be a priority. Euphemisms of reclassification of people in concepts that 'other' abaNTU away from the centre should be identified and managed out of the nomenclature of commerce and industry.
In this way, the Nelson Mandela wish that "out of the experience of and extraordinary human disaster (that lasted too long), must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud...our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity's belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all our hopes for glorious life for all", can be realised.
This piece will be developed further than a 'blog piece'
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
🤷🏽♂️Be ngisho nje
🤷🏽♂️Ek se maar net
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