WHERE IS THE RAINBOW NATION TUTU DREAMED OF?
At a time when we mark the first anniversary of the passing away of Archbishop
Tutu, the man who had a dream of a South Africa that departs from racial disdain
into a mutually respectful rainbow nation, we are yet again confronted by the
dastardly acts of racial hatred with adult white men boorishly attacking black
teenagers for swimming at a resort that their family has paid for as guests. How
incomprehensible is this at the tail end of 2022?
It is of great concern that what happened at that resort in Free State Province is not
an entirely isolated incident. We have recently been hearing of other incidents of
gross displays of racism. In this year alone we have had the case of the
Stellenbosch University student who urinated on a black student’s book bag. What
goes on in the mind of a young person who does that? What socialisation has he
been been schooled in, and in what kind of home environment? As black people
continue to endure these episodes of humiliation it becomes that much more difficult
to hope for national reconciliation and social cohesion, as people view enduring such
humiliation as an unacceptable sacrifice for, and an antithesis of national
reconciliation.
Then there was the Belinda Magor outlandish pit bull incident – calling for the killing
of black men and the gross mutilation of black women’s wombs to prevent child
bearing. Where are we breeding these attitudes? Are these not perhaps a boil-over
of what are more widespread attitudes that do not always surface in “polite”
environments?
We have a litany of the more high profile racial incidents over the years:
• The 2008 rifle wielding Johan Nel and his wild shooting at Skierlik, North West
• The 2008 case of four Free State University students who humiliated black
workers with initiation gimmicks ending with forcing them to eat food they had
urinated upon. Eight years later in 2016, a similar urine incident was conducted
by three Free State students against security guard Ms Mmapaseka Mokhutli.
• The 2016 Penny Sparrow Durban beach goers monkey slur.
• Also in 2016, Oosthuizen and Jackson, the Mpumalanga pair that tortured
black worker Mlotshwa, placing him in a coffin.
• Then there was also in 2016, the case of Vicki Momberg with racial slurs
against a police officer.
• In 2018 we had the Adam Catzavelos K-word celebration on a Greek beach.
These are only the few that hit the headlines. There will be many others that are not
publicly known.
There are cases of black racial attitudes that are also ingrained, and the white racist
expressions simply serve to entrench the black mistrust of the notion of a common
society with whites. But because the apartheid system that thrived on racial division
was intended for white benefit, there is a greater responsibility for whites and
institutions and organisations with influence over white South Africans to play a key
role in promoting amongst whites, respect for black South Africans. In addition to
that, we have the painful reality of the burden of poverty and for blacks in the
unspeakable inequality of our time, with 99% of poverty endured by blacks –
“Africans” and “Coloureds”. Racial mutual accommodation can only be if there are
serious efforts at levelling the plane with greater economic equity across the board.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu wished us into a “Rainbow Nation”; and indeed, that was
his wish for South Africa. It was an aspirational statement, requiring serious work to
realise it. South Africa should have addressed in earnest the challenge of nation
building for a united South Africa with a promise of life in an inclusive society. This,
especially so because even as Tutu was talking about the aspirational Rainbow
Nation, President Mbeki was making his “two nations” critique of South Africa,
pronouncing on the reality of the country’s division into a fractious society that denies
our common nationhood and pointing to our pretence at nation building. Of these two
nations Mbeki said:
“One of these nations is white, relatively prosperous, regardless of gender or
geographic dispersal. It has ready access to a developed economic, physical,
educational, communication and other infrastructure. The second and larger nation
of South Africa is black and poor, with the worst affected being women in the rural
areas, the black rural population in general and the disabled. This nation lives under
conditions of a grossly underdeveloped economic, physical, educational,
communication and other infrastructure. It has virtually no possibility to exercise
what, in reality, amounts to a theoretical right to equal opportunity, with that right
being equal within this black nation only to the extent that it is equally incapable of
realisation.”
This reality persists today as racism rears its ugly head. Mbeki warned that “the
longer this situation persists, in spite of the gift of hope delivered to the people by the
birth of democracy, the more entrenched will be the conviction that the concept of
nation building is a mere mirage, and that no basis exists, or will ever exist, to enable
national reconciliation to take place.”
This was in 1998, four years into democracy, and Tutu still had a good 24 years to be
around to champion his Rainbow Nation. Had we as a nation recognised the
warnings of the Mbeki diagnosis, and the positive prospects of the destination of the
South African nation that Tutu proposed, we may have had a different trajectory.
What happened at Maselspoort Resort on Christmas Day, exactly a year after
Archbishop Tutu has left us, is a challenge to us as a nation to change course. The
grotesque images of adult white men throwing their all at black teenagers; with a
man throttling a boy, and two others appearing to attempt to drown another boy, are
sickening and must be condemned by all South Africans, with a crescendo especially
from white people and white organisations of influence. Blacks need to hear the
white people of influence speaking up publicly on this. And certainly justice must take
its course.
But condemning this is not enough if we do not stand up to change our national
direction on race and ethnicity, towards the common united South African nation that
Desmond Tutu dreamed of. We are challenged to recognise that racism and
ethnicism are alive and well in our society, and ready to break up the prospect of a
united South Africa with prosperous prospects for all. As apartheid successfully
cultivated the seedlings of racial and ethnic division, so are the resultant and now
mature seeds ready to sprout in the dark of our oblivion.
The preamble to our constitution instructs us:
• To recognise the injustices of our past;
• To believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity;
• To heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic
values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
• To improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each
person; and
• To build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a
sovereign state in the family of nations.
In this regard, let us find the ways and means from 2023 on, to work together from all
our social and economic sectors, towards positively resetting the South African
nation, from the two nations that Mr Mbeki warned of as the South African reality, to
the rainbow nation that Archbishop Tutu would have bequeathed South Africa.
We can do this! We must do this; because the alternative is to perish as a nation,
together in our racial and ethnic disunity – a prospect too ghastly to contemplate!!
