Kwa-Zulu Natal is a Indian-African race relations powder keg that has been ignored for decades, as it served the ideological intents of Apartheid. The in-ANC history on the Natal Indian Congress and the ANC show deep seated fissures in the process that led to the 'collaboration pact' against a state whose policy treated both the ANC and NIC members as 'one caste'. Content of that history reveals unresolved multi-racial or non-racial issues only time can heal.
Whilst the liberation movement complex found a way to 'manage' itself 'around' it, and 'innovated' the 'Congress tradition' as an 'internal-to-the-liberation-movement' antidote, it did note deal with the 'national question'. Idiomatic expressions and proverbs shared at dinner tables and goat herding escapades, as well as till point discussions between matriarchs and next generations at Indian markets, as well as well as managed social integration spaces in the night clubs of KZN are but few of the truths about 'the nation's race relations health'.
The politics of multi-racialism and non-racialism grew to being acute in the core political establishment within the Indian communities that it was in African societies. In fact, one of the successes of grand apartheid social engineering was to hierarchise race groups the were 'below' whites into levels that established 'a new caste' system that protected 'in-caste' systems from being vulnerable to apartheid. In-race group castes developed a sense of superiority that started to benchmark in-caste systems in race terms. The per capita budget spending of Apartheid would be catalyst to the hierarchisation of race groups as manifest in the spatial demography of South Africa.
The demographic fault lines of apartheid spatial planning have created a obsessive of a 'us and them' condition that has permeated into the political economy of Kwa-Zulu Natal. Predispositions about each 'other' have settled to levels where new 'apartheids' may have developed and matured to the detriment of the ideal 'non-racialism' imagination of our constitutional democracy.
The curated universe that apartheid has left as a African-Indian race relations legacy could not have not created a socio-cultural echo-chamber effect that amplified and reinforced (negative) biases of and about each other. The concomitant, and unfortunate, growth in the visceral dislike of each other has filters that direct behaviour in all markets which Africans and Indians contest for political economic dominance.
The inherent in-race ways of doing business, how in-race value chains are built to last, how markets for goods are created, the labour absorption methods of in-race businesses, and in-race literatures about each other have to date become social-economic technology that made it easy for 'people' to 'wall' themselves 'off' others. The diversity and breadth of perspective about each other has facilitated unfortunate, and in some instances good, and mutual experiences that have for a while have been a risk to non-racial co-existence.
The DA posters in Phoenix are an outcome of a messaging analysis process. It is known that in local government elections, what moves people in their wards and cities is what is an issue to them as at the time of an election. The party that captures the correct mood and is in frequency with the dominant political emotion will attract the support and sympathy of the votes on tender.
The reaction of the Phoenix 'security' establishment to the 'looting' of businesses was not only an expression of a contextual anger, but of a potentially deep seated anger from within the vortex of an otherwise compromised race relations environment, if idiomatic expressions are carriers of culture and its biases.
One of the vehemently opposed characterisation of the Phoenix shootings was that it was a racist act. The racism debated has been structurally muted to allow 'herd immunity' to a possibility that it is true to reach acceptable levels before it can be genuinely confronted. The public censure of the discourse of the race-dynamics of the shootings has been foregrounded to watermark the potential of this creating new civic engagement obligations that might put our fledging democracy at risk. As the polarisation of society through an expectation of the socio-economic and political economy status quo to stay untouched, political parties message their campaigns to incentivise voters into 'laagers' that collect fears. Self-limited pools of solidarity create unintended obligations to each other often on the basis of externalising the threat to be having 'others' as the 'them' that 'threaten' the 'us'.
The immaturity of political discourse at the alter of party political victory at the polls has de-prioritised nation building, and reduced our politics to a 'our jersey' or 't-shirt' matter. Given the group polarisation will, especially if in the hands of a leadership with a doubtful cognitive capacity, be 'effective when it brings marginalization and injustice to light on behalf of groups who otherwise believe they have no public voice or where it illuminates the need for social protection against a change perceived to be threatening their in-race curated benefits.
The DA, if it applied the citizen-is-consumer construct of neoliberal politics, which is by the way a recipe for conflation of citizen roles, has succeeded in diagnosing the client demands in the current phase of Phoenix politics. In Phoenix, as an enclave with its 'breed' of politics, deliberations might still be 'hot' on whether what they initially rationalised as an act of 'self-protection', and not a 'massacre', is 'heroism' or 'racism'. In 'enclaves', like the DA's Steenhuisenic with a Tony Leonic 'fight back' dose enclave, 'people' can easily isolate themselves into 'extremism' arguable as ' heroism'. The political survival of the DA is unfortunately etched on the 'narrow' interests of its 'dominant' constituency building strategy; the 'constellation of race groups' into a 'separate but equal' paradigm of politicking. The reputational cascades this negative publicity generated might have increased its 'brand value' in 'targeted constituencies'. It is in fact the reputational costs that will come with the outcome of the human rights commission that may have weighed on the removal of the poster.
What the DA had not processed when it approved the poster to go with its name was the extent to which the 'terror' faced by 'victims' of who they called 'heroes' radicalised them into candidates of new 'breeds' of extremism. Whilst the 'terror' meted on the social base the 33 dead people come from may not be 'accepted' as a 'racist' act, it has all the trappings of what we refusing to call it. In fact, its execution, which might have looked to be in isolation, attracted a 'creed' of camaraderie that all of a sudden found a commonality of goals and aspirations, only the DA could muster the courage to label it 'heroism'.
The poster is now removed. What we should ask ourselves as a society is to what extent has its removal dealt with our 'crippled party political epistemologies' that target anyone that dare to question the templates of socio-economic marginalisation. The appetite to bracket what should be the issues in 'election campaigns' and 'elevate fears of the dominant' or 'heroes', an appetite that seem to have also grown in the 'liberation movement complex', has made 'enclaves of marginalisation and extremism' to find spaces within which they can be legitimate.
The manufactured prejudices against anyone that wants to recalibrate the country's race-defined templates of socio-economic dominance have created a platform where narratives of 'new crimes' against humanity could be proudly labelled heroic. In such manufactured contexts, hate speech can be subsidised by our fear to call it what we cannot fathom people from 'certain of our 'social bases' can be, racists.
What we know is that the acts of 'heroes', like 'other heroes' before them in Sharpville, Langa, Soweto, Mamelodi, and lately Marikana have still to be penalised. What we also know is that the 'incitement' the poster started in defining murderous acts as being heroic is not a new one where 'humans' from particular social bases are victims. The tyranny of socio-economic dominance as a new form of oppression is what has produced the poster.
As a herd, South Africa as a 'nation-state' is not immune to racism as a pandemic, we are wearing masks, social distancing, closing spreader events, and yet still dying of the pandemic. We have lockdowns and are not allowing inter social base integration enough because of what we know are the extremes of the pandemic. Phoenix reminded us of the dangers of 'our viruses'. The is no vaccine in sight.
Like always, I leave it to you to draw own conclusions
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo to vulavulela
🤷🏽♂️Be ngisho nje
🤷🏽♂️Ek praat maar net
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