Business Day
*Mazibuko and the reality of SA's racial thinking* *Steven Friedman, Business Day, Johannesburg, 16 November 2011*THERE are people who insist that the election of a 31-year-old with a couple of years' experience as parliamentary leader of the official opposition has nothing to do with race.
There are also people who believe in the tooth fairy.Lindiwe Mazibuko's election as Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary leader is important --- but for the opposite reason to the one popular among commentators. It does not tell us how much we are changing, but how much we remain the same. It shows that, contrary to the belief of many in the racial minorities, race is not a fiction dreamed up by African National Congress (ANC) politicians to feather their nests --- it is a bedrock reality of our society.
Until Mazibuko's election, DA supporters could insist that race played no role in its choice of leaders. This is no longer possible --- her race was an issue throughout the campaign and party leader Helen Zille has said that Mazibuko's blackness is an advantage to the DA.
Race's influence on the DA's choice ran much deeper than Zille and her colleagues would care to admit. While it is now considered prejudiced to mention Mazibuko's age and experience, there are few, if any, examples of parties elevating a 31-year-old with a couple of years in a legislature to leader of its caucus. Despite the hosannahs that accompanied her election, this may well make her tenure far less of an advantage than the DA hopes.
It is clear that some seasoned DA MPs do not like being led by someone decades their junior, who has served in Parliament for a fraction of the time they have and who, some feel, was imposed by the party leader. Despite public pledges of unity, it seems reasonable to assume some of her colleagues may make life difficult for her and that, if they do, her age and inexperience may be a handicap. Perhaps her reputed political skills and the support of her leader will be enough to prevent damage. But that cannot be assumed.
So why did the DA take this risk? The standard answer is that Mazibuko is intelligent and articulate. She is. But she is presumably not the only DA caucus member who fits that description --- and many of the others have been in politics and Parliament a lot longer than she has.
The real answer is that she is the DA's choice not only because she is articulate and intelligent, but she is so in an accent to which the DA leadership can relate and she shares their cultural preferences (she reports that watching British TV programmes is a favourite family pursuit). Racial coding in this society is based not only on how people look but on how they speak and spend their spare time. A politician who sounds like Mazibuko will strike a chord with white DA leaders which a person speaking with a rural Western Cape accent will be denied.
There is circumstantial evidence that the DA leadership knows this. Why else would Zille have launched her extraordinary attack on MP Masizole Mnqasela, accusing him of "Verwoerdian thinking" because he suggested the DA leadership's choice of Mazibuko meant they were willing to accept a black caucus leader only if she spoke like them, and that they therefore had some cultural Rubicons left to cross?
What is Verwoerdian about the suggestion that, given our history, white people are more likely to feel comfortable with black people who speak like them? Is Zille so angry because she is perceptive enough to know Mnqasela struck a raw nerve by suggesting that the nonracialism of the DA's self-image concealed some deep racial attitude?
None of this means that black people are not really black if they speak like Mazibuko and watch the same TV shows as her. What it does mean is that racial thinking is not created by the ANC but by our history. And that race is important not only in the ANC but throughout the political spectrum. The difference between the ANC and the DA is not that one emphasises race and the other is nonracial. It is that race influences both, but in different ways. And the same is true of all our parties --- and all of our public life.
This is an important lesson days after the National Planning Commission urged South Africans to speak openly and honestly about race. The commission is right to suggest that, unless we do that, our potential will be stunted. But we cannot be open if we pretend that the problem ended in 1994 and is being kept alive artificially by one political party.
Mazibuko's election reminds us that race remains the prism through which South Africans across the spectrum see the world --- even when they claim not to do so.
The psychologist's cliché that we can't fix the problems inside our heads unless we accept that they are there, holds for societies as well as individuals. Is it too much to hope that those who continue to deny the reality of racial thinking will acknowledge it and begin dealing with it?
* Friedman is director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy. * * *From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=158775* * * -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
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