Mbeki's ANC is Africanist not Nationalist

...and that is the problem.

Nationalism - A double edged sword?

This week Ivor Chipkin, Wits Professor and author of Do South Africans Exist? roundly denounced African Nationalism in a commentary The curse of African nationalism published in the Mail & Guardian.

Chipkin argues that everything from the denial of the current spate of xenophobic attacks to the government response to Aids can be laid at the door of anti-white sentiment driven by African nationalism.

"It would not be an exaggeration to say that government responses since 1994 to as diverse a range of challenges as macroeconomic policy and HIV/Aids have been informed by a preoccupation with race and white racism in particular."

The reason for a pre-occupation by the ANC with whites is obvious he says. "Apartheid was a phenomenon of mass, institutionalised white racism sustained over many decades."

But says Chipkin, because whites held all the human and financial capital - economic development and racial redress were contingent on managing white racism.

This of course makes sense. But the problem was the wildly divergent ways of seeking redress and managing white racism between the Mbeki and Mandela governments.

Mbeki holds the view that whites can not escape their racism. In exile Mbeki even lobbied to deny Joe Slovo leadership of the South African Communist Party on the basis that he was white.

Before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission whites could, so the theory goes, "by recognising their personal and collective complicity in this violence, resurrect their humanity and enter the new South Africa."

But even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was to be whites' bapticism of fire is insufficient for Mbeki's racial view of the world.

Chipkin is on the button when he says that one of the key ideological tenets of the Mbeki administration has been - "if whites could not escape their racism, then they could not be trusted in public life." This is the essence of what the government transformation policy is says Chipkin.

This thinking is closely associated with "African nationalism" he ads.

"It is distinguished from the politics of non-racialism by its insistence that the post-apartheid government is a black government."

And he diagnoses the negative fall out of this kind "African nationalism". The dismissal of all criticism which is invariably equated as racism. And it works quite simply like this:

1. the government is a black government;
2. criticism of the government is, therefore, criticism of blacks; and
3. criticism is racist.

"The inability to come to terms with the agency of black people is, ironically, the hallmark of African nationalism. It is driven to reduce the actions of blacks to the machinations of others (white racists, in particular). Claims of a "third force" are merely instances of this political logic -- a refusal to come to terms with the racist nationalism of those committing ethnic cleansing throughout the country."

And this is where Mhambi disagrees.

Yes, it's endemic of not just the ANC but also white left-wingers like law blogger Pierre De Vos to present black South Africans as marionettes and to routinely abrogate them from responsibility. Rhoda Kadalie was right when she said that black South Africa has clothed themselves as perpetual victims that makes them oblivious to their own hate.

My problem with Chipkin's piece comes from the description of this phenomena as African nationalism and equating the xenophobic events in the townships with the government's ideology.

As I pointed out in another post it may well be a chauvinistic nationalism that drove the xenophobic violence. It may well be that the fantastical Africanist ideology of the government made for fertile xenophobic soil, by not controlling immigration. But the xenophobia should not be confused with the government's "dominant racially exclusive Africanist ideology" as Van Zyl Slabbert describes it.

Even if this racial Africanism tries to excuse the chauvinistic nationalism, the nationalism actually stands in opposition to much of Africanism.

I would argue that this Africanist ideology is not classically nationalist at all.

Anthony D. Smith of Nationalism and Ethnicty School at the London School of Economics, is considered one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies.

According to Anothony Smith, the preconditions for the formation of a nation are as follows:

• A fixed homeland (current or historical)
• High autonomy
• Hostile surroundings
• Memories of battles
• Sacred centers
• Languages and scripts
• Special customs
• Historical records and thinking

Those preconditions may create powerful common mythology. It's easy to see why on a massive continent with so many divergent culture's, and such weak transport and communication links, the drive for one African Nationalism is a fantasy and out of kilter with reality.

Smith also posits that nationalisms are formed through the inclusion of the whole populace and not just elites. And nations can me multi-ethnic. It's easy to see how the joint fight, often organised on a civic basis, by the grass roots against apartheid could have contributed to a uniting of our different ethic mythologies. Combine this with labour mobility, good transport, and even achievements like winning the rugby world cup and it's easy to see how South Africans can begin to see themselves as a nation.

Although Smith thinks that nations often have some much earlier pri-mordial base that helps the building of the national myth he recognizes that nationalism as a powerful force first presented itself in the 19th century as civic nationalism. It was an age when the winds of change blew through Europe.

When the uniter of Italy, the nationalist Garibaldi arrived in England he was welcomed by English radicals as a progressive. Why?

Because this is the form of nationalism in which the state derives political legitimacy from the active participation of its citizenry, from the degree to which it represents the "will of the people".

This nationalist movement had it's base in the people, uniting them against autocratic rulers.

It is often seen as originating with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and especially the social contract theories. Civic nationalism lies within the traditions of rationalism and liberalism.

When Jacob Zuma was warned to wild cheers to shape up or ship out in a township in Springs, we witnessed perhaps the benign side nationalism introduced to Europe in the 19th century that is normally so lacking in Africa.

A nationalism that not only makes it citizens ask, what can I do for my nation, and not what I can get from my nation. It makes it's people citizens in the first place.

Compare this to Africanism with its woolly insistence of African unity and it's often criticised disrespect for Africa's difference. In this respect the Africanists are much like the Euro centric westerners they despise, they all see Africa as a country.

Africanism is elitist, and sees the whole African continent as the domain of the powerful. The people itself, nevermind their will is all but ignored. Practical evidence of this is for all to see. African leaders at African forums rarely choose the side of populations in opposition to their elite piers.

This clash between nationalism and Africanism explains the ANC and Thabo Mbeki's acute embarrassment when well organised xenophobic nationalism burst his Africanist dream. The people attacked were not white. And allegations of the attacks being driven by Zulu's not withstanding, the hatred united South Africans across - until recently very divisive - ethnic and regional lines.

Intellectually Mbeki would have been allot more comfortable if it was white South Africans being attacked. It would have fitted neatly into his grand narrative of incurable white racism as the source of the countries ills.

After all his biography, A Dream Deferred, references a favourite Mbeki poem used by him to sound a warning to whites in parlaiment.

What happens to a dream deferred?

It explodes.

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What South Africa could learn from China

Recently Mhambi was following another afro-pessimist debate (What's wrong with Africa) on the Mail and Guardians's Thought Leader blog.


Residents opposed to an encroaching train line in Shanghai were warned that gatherings like the one above could result in arrest. (Ryan Pyle for The New York Times)

The defenders of Africa's problems averred - "Hey! The troubles are because Africa imported western style democracy that's not suited locally". Others retorted that democratic rules had not been implemented properly, and yet others yearned for apartheid.

A friend of Mhambi loves China. He speaks Mandarin and travels there regularly. On one of his sojourns in the poor Chinese hinterlands an incident occurred that clearly had made an impression.

He was buying some food from an old Chinese gentleman, a street vendor. As this deal was in progress a passing youngster started shouting at the old man. "You are charging the foreigner too much! How can you exploit him like that?! What will he think of China!"

My friend was a little surprised but did not really mind the 'extra' expense. The 'dear' food was dirt cheap to his pound based purse.

He stayed in a local In that night. Early the next morning he was woken with a knock at the door. It was the old man who had brought him a free food parcel for his days travels, all the while apologizing profusely.

Last week Mhambi was listening to a report on Radio 4's From our own Correspondent. China has in the last few years been racked by hundreds of mini protests. Many Chinese feel left behind in the countries incredible race to economic riches, there is reports widespread corruption, while there is no democratic outlet for the people's grievances.

Recently the government has clamped down mercilessly on corrupt politicians and businessmen.

But reported Radio 4, there has now been two protests, where the Chinese government has set up dedicated telephone lines to deal with grievances. One of them the International Herald Tribune reported on.Said the IHT:

"under President Hu Jintao's policy of "harmonious development," the state has made tentative efforts to solicit public opinion."

China is now in the midst of an icy weather storm, and reports the BBC:

As China froze, and its electricity and transport lines failed, and millions huddled and shivered in train stations, China's top leaders rushed to calm and reassure their people.

And not only did they apologise - they empathised.

At Guangzhou railway station in the south - where hundreds of thousands were stuck - Prime Minister Wen Jiaobao addressed the crowd.

"Comrades, I'm Wen Jiabao," he shouted through a loudspeaker.

"I am here to comfort you. You have suffered a lot and I feel your pain."

It might be autocratic, but the Chinese government is obsessed with the collective welfare of its citizens. As the population is getting richer, this obsession is driving them to be more consultative.

But it's not just the authorities that feel and act responsibly. The Chinese population themselves are fiercely patriotic and obsessed with the good image of their society.

The result of this and this is the sad fact: Your average Chinese is better off governed by autocrats than your average South African in today's democratic South Africa. The average Chinese seems to feel more responsibility for their society than the average South African citizen.

And this brings me to my point. The problem South Africa is facing is not just one of which rules to implement. Rules will only bring us that far. Our challenge is changing an attitude and culture. We are still looking for Ubuntu.

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The Afro-pessimists are restless

The Mail and Guardian blog sections have published two interesting posts yesterday. In one Percy Zvomuya pessimistically asks, in reaction to events in Kenya What is wrong with Africa?.

He should have been more careful because in another post, The new is not yet born: The battle for African democracy, Stephen Friedman calls these "Afro-pessimists — a long, fancy word for people who don’t believe black people in Africa can run anything." But concedes that they have no shortage of ammunition right now.

In the first comment underneath Steven post Ivo Vegter retorts: "The real problem is that in all the racist analysis, everyone gets cast as either an Afro-pessimist or an Afro-optimist. Critics and racists alike go into the first category, and those who vote their racial loyalty or guilty conscience go in the latter. Oddly enough, this feeds off the notion that Africans are somehow different, that the question of whether Africans are capable of self-government is still unanswered. Of course Africans are capable of self-government. Why wouldn’t they be?"

Ivo wants us to argue about the policies of these governments and put the lables behind us.

For a long time Mhambi has agreed with Steven's central contention however. What has transpired in Zimbabwe and in the ANC were signs of democracy. He states this case better:
"In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe’s government ruled largely unchallenged until 2000, when it lost a constitutional referendum, a thinly disguised signal that the people wanted it gone. This forced it into a lengthy attempt to stay in power despite the people’s judgement. Since then, politics in Zimbabwe has been about the elite’s desperate and often violent attempts to shore up their power in the face of democratic forces’ attempt to win change.

In Kenya, tensions were suppressed (but simmered below the surface) while Daniel arap Moi imposed his will on the people for two decades. Democracy was partly achieved when some members of the elite, most notably current President Mwai Kibaki, went over to the opposition and won the last election. But the Kibaki government proved far more like the one it had replaced than Kenyan democrats had hoped and so the ODM emerged to challenge Kibaki. Despite the mealy-mouthed response of the international community, the evidence suggests that the ruling elite thwarted this attempt to deepen democracy by creatively embellishing the election results. Again, the conflict is caused by democratic pressures and the old elite’s response to them.

In Nigeria, a new push for greater democracy began with the fall of the Abacha junta. Previous president Olusegun Obasanjo was elected at the polls but tried to change the Constitution to give himself a third term. Parliament rejected the attempt and so he relied on a strategy also tried in some other countries — he stayed on as head of the ruling party and hand-picked its presidential candidate. But he continues to face resistance, both because the election in which Obasanjo’s choice, Umaru Yar’Adua, won was riddled with irregularities and because Yar’Adua has not turned out as compliant as his predecessor had hoped (a problem that also faced some other presidents who tried to control their successors after their terms were up). Again, the cause of the conflict is the push for more democracy and the elite’s reaction to it.

Here, Jacob Zuma’s victory was prompted by claims that Thabo Mbeki was not accountable enough to the ANC — and fears that a third term would entrench him further. We do not know whether the new leadership will be more democratic than the old — but it remains possible that ANC activists will hold it to account if it is not.

The pattern is clear. The “right” of African presidents to rule for as long as they like, regardless of what their people may think, is under threat.

Mhambi hopes Steven Friedman is right, Mhambi himself is struggling to keep the faith at times.

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Welcome to our country

Mhambi often wishes he could write better. My writing is wooden.


Nora
Originally uploaded by theGentleman™.


Yesterday my inadequacy was reinforced when I met Kleinboer - the boer with the potent libidinous inter-racial libido and disarming words. To him Johannesburg has swapped "kont vir klont, en kondoom vir helmet." (Cunt for gold nuggets, and condoms for hard hats)

Once dubbed the Michel Houllebecq * of Afrikaans, no other than André Brink praised Kleinboer's first book Kontrei.

"Kontrei is a fucking good book. It is one of the most agreeable reads in a long time... A man who can write like this knows his job." said the fellow Lothario.

(* Like Houllebecq's Asian prostitutes, Kleinboer reckons black girls often enjoy their work. Not so the white girls.)


My first neighbourhood - Yeoville
Originally uploaded by ambermbabane.

A very friendly Kleinboer took me round his hood. Yeoville is where I occasionally hung out when I was younger, and where most whitey progressives and artists lived.

Today Kleinboer is one of very very few whites in the area. He bought a house here in the early 90's, from a couple traumatised during a violent break in.

Kleinboer looks at utter ease.

"This is the building where the guy from the band Koos jumped off the balcony", he gestures to a block of flats. It's a bit low I tell him. I mean, theres no certainty in jumping off that building you will die?

"This is where James Phillips lived."

We spot an old white guy. "The only whites left in the area are old ones to poor to immigrate."

Every now and again somebody greets him and asks after his wife.

Kleinboer reckons the area has already hit rock bottom and is now on the way up. Not to long ago his house was worth R100000. Now he thinks its three times that. It's all because of the immigrants he reckons. Especially the Congolese, and the Nigerians. He says that although he thinks about 50% of the blacks in the area are South African, 80% of the businesses are run by immigrants.

He also reckons the variety and kinds of foods to be found in the various new restaurants, trumps the local fare.

He loves the area, but he concedes, he does not have any black friends with whom he can discuss the things that matter to him. For interaction he goes onto the net, Litnet to be exact.

Currently he is upset about all these name changes, he tells me. He has book of the history of place names of South Africa.

Kleinboer took me in to a lively Congolese bar. We were greeted by a gentleman with a heavy French African accent and an old style Pretoria mustache.

"Welcome to our country!" he said, while shaking our hands vociferously.

"You must come back in 2010."

Kleinboer protested, but not too much.

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Orwell's double speak infects SA rugby

“Sport cannot be exonerated from the broad picture of government programmes,” said committee chairman Butana Komphela, who is a member of the governing African National Congress.

“Sport cannot be excluded from imperatives of empowerment and transformation."
This was the language used today in parliament in reaction to the fact that the Springbok rugby team is considered too white. Three months before a world cup where South Africa are considered real contenders.



Today, Tony Leon, ex South African opposition leader gave his first post-leadership speech. He had this to say about South Africa's creeping new ideology:

"Not confined to the public sector, (the programme) now engulfs every nook and cranny of the private sphere of life in SA. Yet this instance of Orwellian overreach is the direct consequence of conflating the concept of transformation into a pervasive instrument of control and manipulation."

Hoor hoor says Mhambi.

There have been hints at changing the SARU constitution to effect chnage.

"I'm not happy with the pace of transformation as the leader of SA Rugby," Hoskins told the parlaimentary committee on Tuesday.
"Our current constitution might have been suited to an amateur era. We need to look at it and put it to the President's Council for possible modification.
"To move rugby forward SARU must have more authority. Change is not something we need to fear."

Mmmm...

Not all the MP's were engaging in double speak however. Some had more direct allegations, but failed to produce any substance.

ANC MP Tsietsi Louw said that black players were being held back from reaching their true potential.

"There is a deliberate political agenda to keep these black players where they are," he said.

"Only three or four will (succeed)."

I wish Mr. Louw would back up his claims with some evidence. He should put up or shut up, because this is a serous allegation to make. The kind of allegation which is goes unchallenged is used as a battering ram for racist agendas.

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White forbidden to meet Mbeki

The plot thickens, Rugby Heaven, an Australian site reports that the South African Rugy Uniion (SARU) wants to forbid Jake White from meeting Thabu Mbeki.


Bokke 1400x1050
Originally uploaded by coda.

White - the ironically named Springbok coach - is under fire for not agreeing to gross political interference is Springbok rugby selections.

Springbok coach Jake White will receive a letter from SA Rugby on Tuesday forbidding him to meet President Thabo Mbeki on Friday.

"We are completing a letter in which we inform Jake that there will be no meeting with President Mbeki," SA Rugby Union deputy president Mike Stofile said on Monday night.

"We cannot allow this to happen," he added.

"We are also writing to the Minister of Sport. All the presidents of the provincial unions feel the meeting (between White and Mbeki) should be cancelled. Jake is undermining our authority."

The Saru leaders are due to appear before the parliamentary portfolio committee on sport on Tuesday to discuss the issue of transformation.

White has also been in the firing line for an incident in a Cafe in Santon Johannesburg. To read an eye witness account of what went down go here.

SARU is a veritable dictatorship-lite. It would have ben funny if it was not so serious.

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On Keo's blog white men can't jump

No blog that attempts to touch on South African identity can be worth its salt if it does not take a careful look at... you guessed it... rugby.

Lucky you, Mhambi just happens to be a huge rugby fan and has been spending allot of time on Keo's blog. Say what?


Flag waving England supporters
Originally uploaded by elhamisabel.

Don't know what Keo is? Keo is Mark Keohane's blog and is about all things South African rugby. Did I mention it's South Africa's largest blog by quite some margin? It is probably more than double the size in terms of readers and comments than the next 10 pretenders to the South African blogging title put together.

If you want to entertained, infuriated, informed, and get an insight into the minds of a significant and passionate part of South Africa, visit Keo.

In response to news that the Springboks might be forced to select 10 black rugby players, one poster - kilikijaan - on Keo said today:

“picking ten blacks will only strengthen the bok team.Just like the maoris strengthened the all blacks.
Its all about genetics and the coloureds and blacks are far superior.”

Can they identify with white players?

kilikijaan is of course right, genetics does matter in sport. A few years ago sports scientist Prof Tim Noaks showed why persons of West African heritage are very likely to win world sprint titles. East Africans are also thought to have an edge in distance running.

West African heritage also dominates heavy weight boxing. It’s also no coincidence that the All Blacks have many Polynesian players in their back line (but never at lock). It’s unlikely that Japan will ever win the world cup rugby, because of their diminutive size.

In 1994 the papers carried a few stories about how the new SANDF has to create a number of smaller uniforms to accommodate the new black troops into an erstwhile mostly white army.

The fact is that South African blacks - even the Zulus - are not only smaller than West Africans they are smaller than whites with British heritage, who in turn are smaller than Afrikaners.

Unfortunately size matters in Rugby. Games are by and large won and lost in the forward pack. South Africa is in luck. Afrikaners are the largest rugby playing brutes on the planet. If countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Germany and the Netherlands started to take the game seriously, watch out.

So race matters, but some societies choose to ignore its stifeling deterministic logic. Why? Because it’s banal business and people that get hung up on it are creepy. It also obscures the poetry of individual quirks, team work, organistation and passion.

Now England has a ‘black’ population of 4% (allot of them Indian) and the national football team is routinely 50% ‘black’ (but no Indians). Do they care that their team is not representative? Nope, guess what, the vast majority want the best team to represent their country. They select on merit. And a minority gets to feel that they belong.

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The unbearable whiteness of being 2

"I am one of you". Nelson Mandela signified by wearing the number 6 Springbok jersey.

Today the message is much different.

Mhambi is sad. I read a troubling story on the web today.

How does one unpack - in a positive way - the meaning of the announcement that the government will step in to ensure that the Springbok rugby team will have at least 10 black players in the starting line-up in 2008? The team will be "Africanised" it is said.


_DSC0752
Originally uploaded by rogan.w.

How does one spin this positive? Add another layer of Rainbow Nation gloss? Have Hunt Lascaris make another multi-racial beautiful people ad where South Africans down Lions at a braai?

Is this a move to restore the racial imbalances of the past? Is it a move to ensure that deserving black players who are not being chosen for the national team are selected?

Apparently not the later, because the designated new 'black' coach, Pieter de Villiers has already indicated that South Africa will have to experience a bit of rugby 'pain' in the name of this 'transformation'. So the team will not necessary be the best, but it will be black. (What black means in South Africa is a moving target. If suits a political aim it appears that it can mean African.)

Will it address the imbalance, the vast gap in education, skills, and money between white and black South Africans? Err no.

So why then?

To Mhambi this reeks of the new racist identity politics that Van Zyl Slabbert already has had a whiff of for a while now. He warned of the creeping racial ideology amongst key members of the government.

At a talk at Wits he reiterated that South Africa’s struggle past was being selectively used to establish a racially exclusive Africanism as “the new dominant ideology”.

It seems that for some very significant South Africans in government, it is better for the country to under achieve at an important sports event, than to have a succesful team that is too white. That is naked racism.

And in South Africa rugby does matter. Especially to Afrikaners. A student of history will tell you that rugby was central in rebuilding Afrikaner identity and reconciliation with English South Africans after the Boer War. It also helped our post apartheid reconciliation, when the country united behind the World Cup victory of 1995.

If these forces are put in reverse? How destructive could they be?

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Behind the Boerewors curtain

"It's like rice in Japan, we will always be here...": Said a peroxide blond boy in a heavy Afrikaans but definitely camp accent.

Mhambi accompanied a long time gay friend to a screening of two documentaries at the UK National Film Theater about gay life in South Africa. Black Beulah's and Behind the Boerewors curtain.

Black Beulahs is a well crafted film and was interesting for what it was not showing. In its world black South African gay men don't really interact much with white ones, except events like the gay pride marches, which tend to be disproportionally white.

Considering the conservatism and prevailing discourse that being gay is a Western import this is not surprising. But the film never explores the antagonism towards being gay in the black community or the apartheid within the community. Still its an interesting insight into a world not often seen.

All the men in this movie are relatively wealthy and deals with the same issues as gay men the world over.

Behind the Boerewors curtain is a film about a minority in a minority in a minority in a minority. Not only are they gay, but they are white, and Afrikaans AND they like to to listen to Boeremusiek and lang-arm (a kind of close and paired dancing which we used to derisory call wind-surfing. See the dancing see the clip below).

Now my friend comes from a small Afrikaner town in the Northern province and is a rather accomplished lang-arm dancer. But he claims he and his fellow Afrikaans moffies would not be seen dead dancing lang-arm. He cringed embarrassed in his seat next to me, while people were spinning around each other on the screen.

Still the film provides evidence that there is allot of gay lang-arm dancing going on. It's a short flick, but it all revolves on the meaning of dancing in this particular way. And according to the dancers - both gay males and lesbians - the reason is that they are Afrikaans. It's an expression of who they are. Yes they say, others think that if we dance like this that we are racist.

In the end, they don't try to defend their gayness. They defend their Afrikaansness. They claim that being Afrikaans is so part of South Africa, it's like rice in Japan, it will never die out.

Here's a Youtube clip of lang-arm dancing. It seems the dancing has made it's way to London.

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Polygamous Lesbians - the African way?

Can you be Gay and African? Is cultural identity or sexuality something you are born with or something you learn?


The wedding invitation.

The BBC reports a facinating case of Aunty Maiduguri. A Nigerian lesbian who married four women last weekend in Kano State. Like in much of Africa Lesbianism is illegal under Nigeria's national penal code. Although not illegal in South Africa, South African lesbians have been known to be subjected to so-called corrective rape. Rape that is supposed to cure to errant women of lesbianism.

Even mainstream commentators like Sehlare Makgetlaneng, head of the southern Africa desk at the Africa Institute of South Africa, a Pretoria-based think-tank claimed that being gay is not African.

But Aunty Maiduguri did something which is claimed to be un-African in a way which is also at times claimed to be very African, namely polygamy. In the process she has not only provided further evidence that Africans are often gay, but also posed some interesting questions.

Must her polygamy trouble the feminists or those that strive for equal rights for women? If her lesbianism is natural and not culturally specific, what is her polygamy? Is their anything specific to lesbian sexuality that makes polygamy attractive or has she learnt polygamy from African custom?

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Gay marriage allowed in South Africa

Mhambi has been very critical of the ANC government of late, but this week they did something that made him proud to be South African. They instituded a law that enables a form of gay marriage in South Africa. The first country in Africa and only the fith one in the world to have these provisions, and most certainly against the wishes of the majority of South African and the ANC's own supporters' whishes.

Now, there are problems with the new legislation. It created a new civil marriage law which includes all South Africans, but had retained the old marriage law that discriminates against gays and lesbians. But others thought the gay marriage legislation was out of touch with Africa, not reflecting the views of Africans anywhere on the continent.

"The bill did not have the approval of the majority - the minority in the society had actually set the wheels in motion for the bill in the 1990s, when the constitution was being written." said Sehlare Makgetlaneng, head of the southern Africa desk at the Africa Institute of South Africa, a Pretoria-based think-tank.

The ANC has defended its decision to push the same-sex marriage bill, saying that since it had brought the constitution to life, it had a duty to ensure that all its laws were in line with it. "We cannot provide for equal rights in the constitution and then take it away [by not enacting legislation]," said Smuts Ngonyama, the ANC's spokesman.

Mhambi salutes the ANC's courage. If South Africa is to address its many social probelms more of this kind of strong moral leadership is needed from its politicians.

Of course gay South Africans have a distiguished record in fighting and speaking out against Apartheid. Ivan Toms, Zackie Achmat, Edward Cameron, Johannes Kerkorrel, Joan Hambridge and many others all played their part.

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The unbearable whiteness of being

iPod Ad
Originally uploaded by sirgeoph.

Talking about whiteness is suddenly all the rage here in South Africa. But it's not so much the whities talking about their whiteness, as it is black South Africans and academia that are.

We all know about black. It's the now fashionable little number you seldom keep closeted if you happen to be black. It gets bandied anout allot, this blackness. Its cool, even the likes of ostensibly white David Beckham claim it.

A friend of mine has just left for Brazil where she is to give a paper on Whiteness in SA. And this week on SAFM - the premier South African radio station - there were a number of programs where they touched on the subject.

It all kicked off when Afriforum, a bunch of white Afrikaner students from the University of Pretoria, painted themselves black during a protest at the seat of government. Their spokesperson a certain Ernst - if I recall correctly - said on Radio that they wanted to be recognised as African.

As part of the protest at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, the students each completed the labour department‘s EEA1 form, in which they classified themselves as African.

On the form, to be filled in by employers as part of government‘s equity reports, people are given a choice of being either African, coloured (a very South African classification), Indian or white. The clear implication, therefore, is that whites, coloureds and Indians cannot be African.

Although Ernst valiantly protested this outrage by painting his face black and defending what he did on radio - he made one mistake. When asked whether this thing of whites wanting to be African is new, Ernst reluctantly agreed, and mumbled that it is indeed a new thing. Duh Ernst!! The word Afrikaner means African!

Good heavens Mhambi thought to himself! Does the boy know nothing about his own Afrikaner history?? If an Afrikaner student leader is such an ignoramus, perhaps the Afrikaners deserve to see their history trampled. Sies man!

Then later in the week Prof Melissa Steyn talked about her new book "Whiteness just Isn't What It Used to Be". Professor Steyn expressed worry about the lack of contrition on the part of white South Africans for what happened in the past. This lack was very dangerous she lamented. Mhambi agrees.

What followed was caller upon caller who heaped scorn on the whities. They had done nothing to reconcile with their countrymen, they obstructed redistribution of wealth, and they were downright racist. In short, they were not sorry for Apartheid.

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