The F-Word: Indifference Today, Denial Tomorrow

City Press

Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya

June 10, 2012.

I’ve enjoyed pouring scorn on white South Africans old enough to have voted who now say they never voted for apartheid.

I enjoy that despite the National Party being voted for in ever-increasing majorities, it seems nobody voted for the Nats during their reign from 1948 to 1994.

I am starting to believe that black South Africans like me are running out of time, as well as the right, to poke fun at our white compatriots.

Like whites did under apartheid, black people are choosing to look the other way as almost every day they see every tier of government spit on the faces of those who voted for it.

One of my reasons for feeling that blacks are losing the moral high ground (if they have not already) was best articulated by Freedom Under Law’s Jeremy Gauntlett when the NGO sought the intervention of the courts in the suspension of crime intelligence chief Richard Mdluli.

Gauntlett said it took the step because if the minister constitutionally tasked with ensuring law and order couldn’t, it was left to outfits such as Gauntlett’s to ensure the right thing happened.

With the ruling party back to its favourite pastime of blaming the “minority” and the courts for colluding in the undermining of majority rule, we have to ask ourselves why it is that the majority keeps silent when a character with criminal charges – as Mdluli has – gets what appears to be a favourable hearing from a Cabinet minister.

The ruling party and its followers might not have said it in as many words, but the subtext is that it is the uppity whites, with a few foolish blacks pretending to be proponents of deepening democracy, who are a spanner in the works.

They say that just because the majority of those who voted for them are black, whites such as Gauntlett should just shut up and pretend nothing is wrong, otherwise they are racists who distrust blacks.

The ruling party gets away with isolating “minorities” who point out its ills because the “majority” chooses silence – unless it relates to the fortunes of a Bafana Bafana coach.

Instead of engaging with the merits of the arguments raised by “minorities”, our rulers would rather paint them as racists unable to trust the capacity of black people to govern.

That way they do not have to account to the majority why their children are still without textbooks halfway through the year, or why they have to risk being raped while crossing the wilds to attend school under a tree.

I’d rather have a racist white compatriot who points out true flaws in how we are governed than an indifferent black nationalist who will imperil the future of my children.

Happily, those are not our only choices.

Patriotism knows no skin colour, just as the instinct to mortgage our children’s future in return for short-term goals is equal-opportunity affliction.

The rise of lobby groups fighting the right fight is a sad indictment of the majority who, like whites did during apartheid, are opting to go on with their merry lives while the signs are there of our country being led into the gutter.

In a normal democracy, blacks – not because they are black but because they are in a majority – would be the ones who government feels the need to account to.

The courts would deal with the normal disputes citizens have or with the miscreants who rob, murder and plunder.

In South Africa, the courts are overworked because those who should be keeping public representatives under watch are too worried about losing their tenders, their Range Rover Sports and homes in exclusive estates.

Yet they think we are an improvement on the whites who today deny ever supporting apartheid.

As it happened with apartheid, today’s indifference will be tomorrow’s denialism – unless we raise our voices against all wrongs, all the time.

» Follow Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya on Twitter @fikelelo

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Comment: Excellent column. Moya hits the nail right on the head. Too many folks who voted this government into office will complain about potholes and point out graft and lament the end of innocence in black politics but do exactly sh*t to take a principled stand for accountability and justice.

And I am not even saying that fed-up ANC voters should look to the Democratic Alliance or Cope or any other of the mostly useless and toothless parties that make up the menagerie of official politics in the deluded rainbow.

I am, however, saying take a f*cking stand and raise your voice at the very least.  Tell Zuma and his associates that you are withholding your consent to be represented by their trifling asses.

What kind of freedom just ambles on while the democratic plot is falling apart?

As I read Moyo's piece I was reminded of an incident I witnessed in a parking lot in Mafikeng (now Mahikeng) a couple of years ago.

A white woman and what looked like her teenage daughter were walking across the parking lot toward the mall when a black women in a car just about ran over their asses.

The white women waited for the black driver to park her expensive German car and then confronted her about her lack of respect for pedestrians.

The black woman driver immediately went into a fit of rage calling the white woman a racist and screaming insults about this being a new day and not the apartheid era.

This she did all the while as the white woman retreated and began walking in the direction of the mall.

I was astounded. All my years of studying and teaching courses on race and racism did not allow for me to see the racism pointed out by the black driver because it was not there.

Where is it written in the new South Africa that a black driver in a posh car does not have to obey simple road rules and cede the right of way to pedestrians who just happen to be white?

And where is it written that a white pedestrian who confronts a black driver who nearly ran their ass over must be a racist?

Nowhere of course.

The rot in the minds of too many of the newly created nationalists is that anything that stands in their way must be run over.  It is a spurious kind of entitlement thinking that sits quite comfortably inside the halls of the post-apartheid state.

My thinking is that if the pedestrian was not white but black the same level of disregard would have been shown but the response would have been different in race terms but not necessarily in vehemence.

Truth is that too many South Africans are just uncouth muthaz. We are a rude f*cked up nation with a racial chip on our shoulder the size of Table Mountain.

Most of us care very little about the creeping loss of freedom in South Africa as long as our material sh*t is taken care of.

Why stand up for what the supposed revolution promised even when living here too often feels worse than when the whites ran this b*tch?

Far from the Ubunthu sh*t that is passed around as a souvenir of African morality is the reality of a fractured and frail nation-state devoid of political substance.

If the Brett Murray incident 'speared' anything it was not the ego and greedy appetite of the new rulers.

Instead Murray was used as an excuse to conveniently remind ANC voters that those rich ruling b*tches in their expensive automobiles are still under attack by bogey white people so get out and show your support by voting them back into office.

It was a power play that used race baiting much the same way that black driver did in Mahikeng.

So will anything change to flip the script?

Well not likely in the near future.

The overwhelming predilection is to vote the obese pointy-shoe brigade into office yet again and in so doing help their bloated asses to f*ck up even more of what this country could have been if the ANC leadership believed half the sh*t they said in 1994.

And we are not free.

Onward!